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The United Nations and Interpol, the global police organization, are poised to become partners in fighting crime by jointly creating an international police force. Interpol, which is financed by 187 member nations, says the "global police doctrine" would allow the deployment of peacekeepers among rogue nations plagued by war and organized crime. "We have a visionary model," said Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble, who described the joint partnership "an alliance of all nations." He suggested that by relying on Interpol's resources, the United Nations would be able to handle international conflicts and transnational crime far better.

*NEA conference call full audio and transcript here** Should the National Endowment for the Arts encourage artists to create art on issues being vehemently debated nationally? That is the question that I set out to discuss a little over three weeks ago when I wrote an article on Big Hollywood entitled The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?” The question still requires debate but the facts do not. The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable. But some have claimed that...

Col. Richard Kemp Formerly commander of British forces in Afghanistan Col. Richard Kemp told a conference in Jerusalem on June 18, 2009: "Hamas' military capability was deliberately positioned behind the human shield of the civilian population. They also ordered, forced when necessary, men, women and children from their own population to stay put in places they knew were about to be attacked by the IDF. Israel was fighting an enemy that is deliberately trying to sacrifice their own people, deliberately trying to lure you into killing their own innocent civilians." Click here to read the full presentation. Click here to...

US President Barack Obama consistently couches his demand that Israel prohibit Jewish people from constructing or expanding our homes and communities in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria in legal-sounding language. Obama has called settlements "illegitimate." And he has said that Israel "has obligations under the road map," while referring disparagingly to "settlements that, in past agreements, have been categorized as illegal." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell have repeatedly uttered similar statements. By characterizing its demand that Israel prohibit Jews from building homes in Israel's capital city and its heartland as a legal requirement, the...

While our media sleep, the United Nations is proceeding, with President Obama's acquiescence, to implement a global plan to create a new international socialist order financed by global taxes on the American people.The Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development that begins on Wednesday will consider adoption of a document calling for "new voluntary and innovative sources of financing initiatives to provide additional stable sources of development finance..." This is U.N.-speak for global taxes. They are anything but "voluntary" for the people forced to pay them.The most "popular" proposals, which could generate tens of...

State Department legal adviser nominee Harold Koh believes that notwithstanding congressional authorization, the Iraq war “violate[s] international law” because the United States did not receive “explicit United Nations authorization” for the war. I’d be interested to learn how (apart from crass political considerations) Koh reconciles his position on the Iraq war with his support for President Clinton’s war in Kosovo.  The Kosovo war had a much weaker basis in international law than the war in Iraq (which, among other things, had at the very least a strong claim of having implicit United Nations authorization).  And, as a matter of domestic law,...

Under Sharia law men can divorce their wives (as Islam allows up to four of them) by just writing or saying that they want a divorce three times. This is known as talaq. A Sharia Court in Saudi Arabia has now allowed a Muslim man to divorce his wife via text message.

Law: President Obama's nominee for State Department legal adviser could be a future Supreme Court pick. He believes U.S. law should be based on foreign precedent, and even Shariah law could find a home here.We have commented many times on the opinion of a number of U.S. Supreme Court justices that American jurists should include foreign law and precedent in their decisions. In several prominent cases, this has already happened. In a speech in South Africa, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the March 2005 Roper v. Simmons decision, in which a 5-4 majority ruled against executing murderers who were 17...

The conviction Tuesday of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori on human rights charges – including authorizing murder and kidnapping – has been hailed by some as a milestone for justice in Latin America. Mr. Fujimori, who ruled Peru throughout the 1990s, is the first democratically elected leader in the region found guilty, in his own country, of human rights abuses. But the conviction is also an important moment for national healing in Peru, says Efrain Gonzales, the vice rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima. While about one third of the country still supports the former leader,...

As the U.S. government’s myriad intrusions radically transform our economy, few seem to notice the dangerous progress of the international Left’s assault on American sovereignty. Without firing a shot, transnational progressives are further along than the Soviet Union could ever have reasonably hoped to be, notwithstanding Lenin’s prescient understanding that we would willingly participate in our own demise. In the Left’s sights is the very concept of the American people’s right of self-defense. The New York Times reports that a Spanish court is considering filing human-rights charges, and issuing arrest warrants, against former attorney general Alberto Gonzales and five other...

JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq. Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh. President Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. In that job, Koh would forge a wide range of international agreements on issues from trade to arms control, and help represent...

Last September, the Bush administration defended the unusual secrecy over an anti-counterfeiting treaty being negotiated by the U.S. government, which some liberal groups worry could criminalize some peer-to-peer file sharing that infringes copyrights. Now President Obama's White House has tightened the cloak of government secrecy still further, saying in a letter this week that a discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and related materials are "classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958." The 1995 Executive Order 12958 allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do "damage to the national security and the...

• Right at the outset of Israel’s recent operation in Gaza, French pro-Palestinian organizations filed a lawsuit against the Israeli president, foreign minister and defense minister. Turkish prosecutors said in February 2009 that they were investigating whether Israeli leaders should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity over Israel’s offensive in Gaza, after Mazlum-Der, an Islamic-oriented human rights organization, filed an official complaint in Turkey. At the same time, a Spanish judge is currently investigating the role of Israeli soldiers and security officials in a bombing in Gaza in 2002 in which a top Hamas suicide bombing planner, Salah Shehada, and...

Nearly 2,200 government employees involved in foreign policy issues signed a letter delivered to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday calling on the government to give equal benefits to same-sex partners. The Bush administration had eased some rules, opening up some training to same-sex partners, but had resisted efforts to treat homosexual partners the same as married couples. But Clinton, during her confirmation hearings, indicated a greater willingness to explore the issue. "I think that we should take a hard look at the existing policy," Clinton said in response to a question from Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). "My understanding...

The rule of distinction requires combatants to aim all their attacks at legitimate targets. Attacks deliberately aimed at civilians are war crimes. A corollary of the rule of distinction is a ban on the use of weapons that are incapable of being properly aimed. The rockets used by the Palestinian attackers cannot be aimed at specific targets and are launched at urban areas. This means the use of these weapons violates international law. Each one of the 6,000 rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian terrorists on civilian targets in Israeli towns is a war crime. Both the terror squads carrying...

For those individuals -- such as nearly all members of the world news media -- who, in light of Israel's invasion of Gaza -- see moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians, here are some clarifying thoughts. First, it would be difficult nearly to the point of impossibility, to find Israeli or other Jews who celebrate the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Jews both within and outside of Israel cringe when they see pictures of dead Palestinian men, women, and children in Gaza. For thousands of years at their Passover seders, Jews have removed wine from their cups to ceremonially weep...

The rule of distinction requires combatants to aim all their attacks at legitimate targets. Attacks deliberately aimed at civilians are war crimes. A corollary of the rule of distinction is a ban on the use of weapons that are incapable of being properly aimed. The rockets used by the Palestinian attackers cannot be aimed at specific targets and are launched at urban areas. This means that the very use of these weapons violates international law. Each one of the 6,000 rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian terrorists on civilian targets in Israeli towns is a war crime. Both the terror...

The rule of distinction requires combatants to aim all their attacks at legitimate targets. Attacks deliberately aimed at civilians are war crimes. A corollary of the rule of distinction is a ban on the use of weapons that are incapable of being properly aimed. The rockets used by the Palestinian attackers cannot be aimed at specific targets and are launched at urban areas. This means that the very use of these weapons violates international law.

Hamas' use of the children and other innocents as human shields at the UN school got it desired effect yesterday. They they fired mortars on Israeli troops, the troops returned the fire, and dozens of civilians died or were injured, along with the terrorists. There is a library full of evidence proving it isn't the first time Hamas has used innocents as human shields. Hamas built armories in the basements of Mosques and schools, private homes and hospitals. They create their bunkers and weapons factories in crowded neighborhoods. All of this "construction" was done out in the public. Under the...

The easiest way for anyone in the media to get a scoop is to write anything that is fair and balanced and with respect for the truth on the conflict in the Middle East. That’s because the mainstream media, such as The New York Times, NBC, Philadelphia Inquirer, etc., take the usual anti-Israel line, and fail to report on anything that might put Israel in a good light. So this is my scoop for today. You may have encountered “The Brave New World,” but now you better brace yourself for “The Crazy New World.” Even George Orwell would be shocked...

Today Israel fired a on a UN School in Gaza killing 40, including some children. According to the IDF early reports suggest that there were mortars fired upon them from the school. Hamas has a history of using this school as a launching point for mortars, and the students as human shields. The video below shows Hamas using the school to fire mortars in October 2007:

The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), an association of the world's Islamic states, is pushing the United Nations to outlaw "defamation" of religion in general – and of one religion in particular.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly split over the issue of gay rights on Thursday after a European-drafted statement calling for decriminalization of homosexuality prompted an Arab-backed one opposing it. Diplomats said a joint statement initiated by France and the Netherlands gathered 66 signatures in the 192-nation assembly after it was read out by Argentina at a plenary session. A rival statement, read out by Syria, gathered some 60.

The State of Israel completely withdrew from the Gaza Strip and relinquished all governing responsibility to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in August, 2005, while continuing financial aid. Since then, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas conquered the Strip, and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have launched more than 6,000 projectile attacks at Israeli soil, largely aimed at killing the civilian population residing in Israeli towns near the Strip. Shockingly, many in the international media, NGOs and international institutions such as the UN have greeted the illegal Palestinian attacks with forgiving silence. While whitewashing Palestinian crimes, they have fallen back on their traditional...

IKEA’s Polish Catalogue Introduces “Ian and Steve” as a Model of the New Family By Hilary White December 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An ad campaign in the latest catalogue by the Swedish furniture giant, IKEA, purporting to depict “modern” life, includes twelve portraits of “families” that promote a “new model of living together.” Among these is the domestic arrangement of “Ian” and “Steve,” under the slogan, “the family is ... two sister souls.” “Ian and Steve,” the ad says, have no intention of having children, but enjoy their “command centre” IKEA kitchen and herb garden. The catalogue, says a pro-family...

Snip Traditionally, pirates fell within that category of illegitimate hostiles that once included slave traders, brigands on the roads and, in wartime, unprivileged or "unlawful" enemy combatants. As Judge Nicholas Trott, presiding over a pirate trial, explained in 1718: "It is lawful for any one that takes them, if they cannot with safety to themselves bring them under some government to be tried, to put them to death." This law, of course, has changed since the 18th century. Pirates, brigands and unlawful combatants must now be tried before they can be punished. Snip The key problem is that America's NATO...

BERLIN - The number two at the German foreign ministry on Saturday said Georgia is breaking international law by launching military action to reclaim South Ossetia. Gernot Erler said Tbilisi had breached a 1992 ceasefire agreement struck with Russia over the renegade Caucasus enclave, monitored essentially by Russian peacekeepers. "In this sense, it is also a question of a violation of international law as soon as you start to go down the road of military action," Erler told German radio station NDR Info. Erler acknowledged prior provocation of the Georgian leadership from Russian-backed South Ossetia's separatists, but said he understood...

A United Nations human rights committee meeting recently in New York grilled liberal Finland about gender parity on the boards of private Finnish companies. The committee demands 50 percent representation on all private boards. Americans should be concerned because Senate Democrats will likely move to ratify the treaty that would place America in the dock to answer similar and even more outrageous questions. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has languished in the U.S. Senate for years since it was signed by Jimmy Carter in 1980. Even so, CEDAW ratification has remained a...

The historical record makes it nonsense to regard the formation of a Palestinian state as anything other than a collective, internationally-approved land grab in itself in an area mandated by the League of Nations as a Jewish homeland. For too much truth, at first sight, ne’er attracts. - George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIV The Israeli government’s present intention of holding on to a sliver of the West Bank within the perimeter of the security fence is an issue of serious import and is widely regarded as an illegal land grab. Yet the issue is by no means...

Whether out of hubris or principle, or both, the United States has not understood its support for international law and institutions to imply a surrender of its own commitment to self-government. As the international system became more powerful, and international law diverged from U.S. law, the United States inevitably began to show unilateralist tendencies -- not simply out of self-interest but because the United States is committed to democratic self-government. The continental European democracies, with their monarchical histories, their lingering aristocratic cultures, and their tendency to favor centralized, bureaucratic governance, have always been considerably less democratic... The American and French...

Roe v. Wade Goes Global by: Jeremy Hempel, February 01, 2008 There is a trend visible in the international community as the right to abortion slowly becomes international law, a report issued last fall by the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (CFHRI) shows. This all started in 1996 when a conference of agencies, treaty bodies, and organizations was held in Glen Cove, New York, according to Rights By Stealth: The Role of UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies in the Campaign for an International Right to Abortion. The official name for this meeting was the “Roundtable of Human Rights Treaty...

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The agency that oversees training and hiring standards for police departments in Maryland is looking at a proposal that would let noncitizens with green cards become police officers. The proposal is being championed by Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger. He said it doesn't make sense that legal immigrants can join the U.S. military but can't become law enforcement officers. The Maryland Police Training Commission could vote on the issue next month. Critics said it would be difficult to check the backgrounds of noncitizens applying to be officers, and they said the proposal could allow terrorists to...

It seems rather déjà vu to be contemplating a Balkan deadline again, but that is where we are with Kosovo. The UN established Monday, December 10 as the date by which Kosovo's future constitutional status was to be made clear. It is, sadly, anything but clear: the Albanian Kosovars expect independence, which Belgrade refuses to concede. We should not underestimate the volatility of this situation. While both Kosovar and Serb leaders claim to oppose the use of force to achieve their aims, the same cannot be said of the ethnic paramilitary groupings. After 78 days of bombing, Milosevic conceded to...

A Deeper Understanding of the Threat of International Law In the March/April 2006 Home School Court Report, I made the case for a parental rights amendment to the United States Constitution. Even though parental rights are recognized as a fundamental right under current Supreme Court doctrine, there are two threats to recognition of this principle. First, a growing number of Supreme Court justices refuse to recognize that parental rights are a fundamental right. Justice Antonin Scalia, a noted conservative, holds that parental rights are not judicially enforceable at all until there is a specific parental rights provision in the Constitution....

Death Penalty Case Puts Bush and Texas at Odds Over Mexican's FateSunday, October 07, 2007 WASHINGTON — President Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the state's execution of a Mexican national for the brutal killing of two teenage girls. The case of Jose Ernesto Medellin has become a confusing test of presidential power that the U.S. Supreme Court, which hears the case this week, ultimately will sort out. The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated...

WASHINGTON - To put it bluntly, Texas wants President Bush to get out of the way of the state's plan to execute a Mexican for the brutal killing of two teenage girls. Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin in what has become a confusing test of presidential power that the Supreme Court, which hears the case this week, ultimately will sort out. The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated...

by Steven ErteltLifeNews.com EditorAugust 31, 2007Managua Nicaragua (LifeNews.com) -- The Supreme Court in Nicaragua is expected to issue a ruling on the nation's abortion ban in the next two weeks. The Central American nation adopted the complete ban last November that prohibits all abortions, including those for rape and incest or to save the life of the mother.Abortion advocates, led by the New York-based Americas for Human Rights Watch, have taken the law to court.The nation's high court is expected to deliver a decision in the case soon and it could result in the undermining of other pro-life laws in...

The European Commission has issued formal charges against Intel, the world’s biggest chipmaker, alleging it has abused its dominant market position with respect to its biggest rival, Advanced Micro Devices. Antitrust regulators in Brussels have sent Intel a statement of objection outlining the charges, according to a person close to the investigation. Details have not been revealed but they are expected to include allegations that it undermined competition by offering rebates to PC makers that effectively shut out AMD from the local microprocessor market.It has also faced accusations that it Intel could face fines worth up to 10 per cent...

Woo-hoo! "The Simpsons Movie" has won its name back on the Internet. A UN agency has ruled that ownership of the domain name thesimpsonsmovie.com must be handed to News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox, which owns the rights to the film and the popular TV series. Twentieth Century Fox complained to the World Intellectual Property Organization over the use of the film's name in the Internet address of a site registered by Keith Malley of New York. Fox lawyers claimed Malley was using the address to divert Internet users to a website that included sexually explicit depictions of several characters from...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court threw out death sentences for three Texas killers Wednesday because of problems with instructions given jurors who were deciding between life in prison and death. In the case of LaRoyce Lathair Smith, the court set aside the death penalty for the second time. It also reversed death sentences for Brent Ray Brewer and Jalil Abdul-Kabir. The cases all stem from jury instructions that Texas hasn't used since 1991. Under those rules, courts have found that jurors were not allowed to give sufficient weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life sentence...

STRASBOURG, April 26, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a disgraceful debate in the European Parliament (EP) yesterday, Members of the European Parliament from France, the Netherlands and Italy, among others, vilified Poland as "hateful" and "repulsive" for refusing to allow promotion of homosexuality in schools. A vote was held today to approve an EP resolution chastising Poland for 'homophobia.' The resolution - adopted by 325 votes to 124, with 150 abstentions - calls for a fact-finding mission to be sent to Poland, for "worldwide de-criminalisation of homosexuality" and for the Commission to take Member States to court if they breach their...

Move over, Borat. The hottest new voice in comedy is Vladimir Putin, otherwise known as the man who saved Russia from freedom and democracy. Putin convulsed his audience at the Munich Conference on Security with this sparkling one-liner: “Nobody feels secure any more, because nobody can take safety behind the stone wall of international law.” International law has been likened to many things—gauze, cotton, clouds, tissue paper, vapor—but a “stone wall?” Where did Putin come up with this utterly original metaphor? Perhaps from the idealistic years of his youth, when he proved his devotion to making people secure by going...

People who question the official history of recent conflicts in Africa and the Balkans could be jailed for up to three years for "genocide denial", under proposed EU legislation. Germany, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, will table new legislation to outlaw "racism and xenophobia" this spring. Bosnian Muslims fleeing Srebrenica in 1995. Up to 8,000 were killed in the UN-designated 'safe area' when the town fell to Bosnian Serbs Included in the draft EU directive are plans to outlaw Holocaust denial, creating an offence that does not exist in British law. But the proposals, seen by The Daily...

Europe's abortion rules AUSTRIA Availability: On request Gestational limit: First three months - in practice often before 12 weeks Conditions: Must have medical consultation. May be performed after 12 weeks if necessary to avoid serious danger to the woman's physical or mental health; if the child is at risk of being born with a serious physical or mental defect; or if the woman is under 14 years of age. In practice, the ability of a woman to pay for an abortion is an important factor. It is difficult for women to get an abortion outside Vienna and other big...

JEDDAH, 28 December 2006 — A two-day conference organized by the Makkah-based Muslim World League yesterday called for a consultative commission in order to take legal action against those who abuse Islam and its Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and Islamic sanctities, at local and international courts of justice, the Saudi Press Agency said. The conference titled “In Defense of the Prophet” called upon Islamic countries and governments to stand united to defend the Islamic faith and its Prophet. It denounced the smear campaigns to tarnish the image of the Prophet and urged Muslims to make all-out efforts to...

U.N. threatening to trump U.S. Constitution By Olivia St. John As the political cauldron heats up for the coming 2008 presidential election, few Americans seem to realize that their personal freedoms secured under the Constitution are perilously close to being trumped by the United Nations. Preposterous, you say? Not if a Democrat Senate and Democrat president ratify U.N. treaties, such as the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, aimed at dangerously weakening national sovereignty. A case in point is the European Convention on Human Rights, an offshoot of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is currently...

The Beast from the East River By Bill Steigerwald FrontPageMagazine.com | November 28, 2006 These days nobody but rock stars, actors and grade school kids still seem to love, trust or have much confidence in the United Nations. And Nathan Tabor, a conservative columnist, can tell you more than a few good reasons why. The title of his new book, The Beast on the East River: The UN Threat to America’s Sovereignty and Security, gives away his major theme. I talked to him by telephone on Tuesday from his home near Winston-Salem, NC: Q: First we should get the nice...

PURCELLVILLE, VA, October 11, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) –  International law and court decisions will have increasing influence on US Supreme Court and Constitutional analysis, warns an American lawyer Michael Farris, head of the Virginia-based Homeschool Legal Defense Association.The US Supreme Court will increasingly use international, not domestic, law sources to “help interpret American law, including the US Constitution,” Farris writes.He quotes the late Justice Rhenquist, considered a conservative, who said, “It is time that the United States courts begin looking to the decisions of other constitutional courts to aid in their own deliberative process.”Given the direction towards the extreme left...

How thinking of terrorists as pirates can help win the war on terror INTERNATIONAL LAW LACKS A DEFINITION FOR TERRORISM as a crime. According to Secretary General Kofi Annan, this lack has hampered "the moral authority of the United Nations and its strength in condemning" the scourge. But attempts to provide a definition have failed because of terrorists' strangely hybrid status in the law. They are neither ordinary criminals nor recognized state actors, so there is almost no international or domestic law dealing with them. This gives an out to countries that harbor terrorists and declare them "freedom fighters."...

NINE of every 10 whales killed by Japan last summer were in Australia's Antarctic whale sanctuary. Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell said a report by the Japanese Whale Research Program confirmed 50 humpback whales would be killed next summer, as well as 850 Antarctic minkes and 50 fin whales. He said maps in the report showed 90 per cent of kills last summer were in the Australian sanctuary. "The killing of whales by Japan in the Australian sanctuary is in clear breach of International Whaling Commission policy," said Senator Campbell. He told The Australian he was particularly concerned by the...