Free Republic

Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan died on Saturday at age 80. Annan served as Secretary General between 1997 and 2006. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. In 2004, after archterrorist Yasser Arafat's death, Annan held a special meeting in the UN. The meeting included a "moment of silence." Responding to his death, Israel's Foreign Ministry called Annan one of the "pillars" of "multilateral diplomacy," and said he "devoted his life to achieving peace, reducing poverty, and fighting child morbidity." During his term, Annan opposed attempts to de-legitimize Israel, as well as attempts to deny the Holocaust....

Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan wants you to eat more insects. Why? It’s better for the environment and your health, he argues. “Keeping meat consumption to levels recommended by health authorities would lower emissions and reduce heart disease, cancer, and other diseases,” Annan told The Guardian Sunday. “And of course there are alternative sources of protein. For example, raising insects as an animal protein source,” Annan said. “Insects have a very good conversion rate from feed to meat. They make up part of the diet of two billion people and are commonly eaten in many parts of the world.”

I am quoted in today’s NYT on a new report issued by the Global Humanitarian Forum which makes the absurd claim that 315,000 deaths a year can be attributed to the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. Here is what I said: Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies disaster trends, said the forum’s report was “a methodological embarrassment” because there was no way to distinguish deaths or economic losses related to human-driven global warming amid the much larger losses resulting from the growth in populations and economic development in vulnerable regions....

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga have signed an agreement to end the country's post-election crisis. At a ceremony in Nairobi, the two men put their signatures to a power-sharing deal brokered by ex-UN head Kofi Annan. --snip-- Speaking after the signing, Mr Kibaki said: "This process has reminded us that as a nation there are more issues that unite than that divide us... "We've been reminded we must do all in our power to safeguard the peace that is the foundation of our national unity... Kenya has room for all of us." Political violence has ignited...

Gangs armed with machetes and bows and arrows burned and hacked to death members of a rival tribe in western Kenya Sunday, as the number of dead from the latest explosion of violence over disputed presidential elections rose to 69. Houses were blazing in the tourist gateway town of Naivasha, torched by members of President Mwai Kibaki's tribe exacting revenge on their Luo rivals... The latest deaths raise the toll to nearly 800 killed in ethnic violence and clashes with police since Kibaki was declared winner of Dec. 27 balloting that international and local observers say had a rigged tally....

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan on Sunday slammed Africa's brutal regimes, sit-tight leaders and conflicts in the midst of chronic poverty and disease. "About half of the worlds's armed conflicts and some three quarters of the UN's peacekeepers are in Africa. This is because millions of Africans are still at the mercy of brutal regimes... showing no respect for human rights, or even human life," he said in a speech in South Africa for Nelson Mandela's birthday. Annan said the former South African president showed a "wonderful" example when he quit office in 1999 at...

Heavy metal legend Dave Mustaine and TAS's old friend, Human Events editor Jed Babbin, probably don't share too many overlapping areas of interest. But, as Megadeth's latest offering United Abominations makes clear, the transgressions of a certain international body situated on the Hudson River is one topic over which the guitarist and Inside the Asylum author could have a meeting of the minds. In a mere five minutes and thirty-seven seconds United Abominations' title track encapsulates a litany of complaints against this "blot on the face of humanity," as Mustaine sneeringly calls it, from its practical indifference to ethnic cleansing...

BOULDER — University of Colorado students paid $160,000 in April to hear former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan say the people of the world must work together to bring about peace. The amount came as a surprise Wednesday to several members of CU's board of regents, who saw the figure on a routine list of speakers and their fees for the school year that just ended. Annan was far ahead of the second-highest-paid speaker, liberal historian and activist Howard Zinn, who received $15,500. The amount for the one-hour speech brought calls from some regents for more frequent audits of student government,...

That cup of coffee just not getting it done anymore? How about a Buzz Donut or a Buzzed Bagel? That's what Doctor Robert Bohannon, a Durham, North Carolina, molecular scientist, has come up with. Bohannon says he's developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods, without the bitter taste of caffeine. Each piece of pastry is the equivalent of about two cups of coffee. While the product is not on the market yet, Bohannon has approached some heavyweight companies, including Krispy Kreme, Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks about carrying it.

Kofi Annan had a pet peeve – Israel. If only Israel would do this or that, terrorism would end, peace would come to the Middle East, harmony would reverberate around the world, and the reasons for hating the rest of us would wither away. It was, and is, a lie that has served the world's worst human rights violators well, allowing them to escape scrutiny since the UN is otherwise occupied. It therefore comes as no surprise to learn of the tally of condemnations coming from the General Assembly during the fall of 2006: Resolutions condemning Israel for human rights...

On his way out the door, Kofi Annan has signed new rules meant to curb corruption in UN procurement activities, which since the Feds began investigating last year have been sprouting indictments and guilty pleas pertaining to the abuse of enormous amounts of taxpayer money on Kofi’s watch. It’s thoughtful of Kofi to bequeath brand new rules to his successor, Ban Ki-moon, who takes charge Jan. 1. But this leaves the question of why Kofi, who worked in the UN system for more than four decades, and spent much of that time deep in the nitty-gritty of UN personnel and...

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday a negotiated settlement with Iran over its nuclear program should be sought, and he warned that military intervention would be "unwise and disastrous." Annan, who steps down as U.N. chief Dec. 31, issued the warning as the Security Council debated a resolution that would impose sanctions on Tehran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment. The United States is considering sending a second aircraft carrier to Persian Gulf as a show of force against Iran. He addressed concerns about a possible military operation in Iran at a farewell news conference in response...

As Secretary-General Annan prepares to leave his post at the United Nations, a mystery is surfacing surrounding his apartment on Roosevelt Island, subsidized by New York taxpayers, which is still in use by the family of his brother, Kobina Annan. The apartment was where Mr. Annan and his wife lived before 1997, when he became secretary-general. The Roosevelt Island home is part of an estate of low-rent state-regulated housing. For years, the Annans saved considerable sums by occupying an apartment meant to help financially strapped low- to moderate-income New York families. One question Mr. Annan has never addressed is why...

As Secretary-General Annan prepares to leave his post at the United Nations, a mystery is surfacing surrounding his apartment on Roosevelt Island, subsidized by New York taxpayers, which is still in use by the family of his brother, Kobina Annan. The apartment was where Mr. Annan and his wife lived before 1997, when he became secretary-general. The Roosevelt Island home is part of an estate of low-rent state-regulated housing. For years, the Annans saved considerable sums by occupying an apartment meant to help financially strapped low- to moderate-income New York families. One question Mr. Annan has never addressed is why...

Chuck Hagel: Global framework must recognize 21st-century realities BY CHUCK HAGEL The writer, of Omaha, is Nebraska's senior U.S. senator. In a 1953 speech delivered in Denver, President Dwight D. Eisenhower presented a new nuclear frame of reference for the world. He knew if the world was to survive in a nuclear age, it would require new thinking relevant to the world's new nuclear realities. Nuclear power had become part of mankind. Eisenhower laid out in the Denver speech his thoughts on how nuclear power could be used for something productive and positive to be shared by all people rather...

[ed. note - found in a remodeling dumpster at 48th and FDR Drive: first draft of Kofi Annan's valediction] Nearly 50 years ago, when I arrived in Minnesota as a student fresh from Africa, I had much to learn. For example, the concept of “connecting flights,” because I was actually supposed to be going to California. My cab had already plowed through several miles of Minneapolis snowdrifts before I realized my horrible mistake, but I decided to make the best of it. Over the next few years I adapted to the quaint arctic customs of the indigenous Minnesotans -- wearing...

The skivvy around the United Nations is that when Secretary-General Annan makes his final remarks to the Security Council on the Middle East today, he is going to let Iran and Syria off the hook and seek to blame Israel for the woes of the region. This is the gist of what was picked up and reported on the Sun's online edition yesterday by our Daniel Freedman, who reckons it will be a telling moment for Mr. Annan. "Will he finally recognize what America, and even Europe, have recognized — that the election of the terrorist group Hamas into government...

UN Human Rights Council's Israel Spotlight Continues (CNSNews.com) - The U.N. Human Rights Council has ended its third session having spent more time focused on Israel than on all 191 other U.N. member states put together. According to statistics drawn up by the Hudson Institute's Eye on the U.N. project, the Geneva-based body dedicated nine hours during the Nov. 27-Dec. 8 session to Israel, compared to six hours spent on discussing other country-specific situations in the rest of the globe. The rest of the time was spent on issues not specifically relating to individual states, it said. The HRC was...

Kofi Annan has put us on official notice. He says "The US must not sacrifice its democratic ideals to fight terrorism." I appreciate Kofi's sentiments the way I appreciate the punch line of any good joke. I think the shorthand version of Kofi's remarks would read "The US must not fight terrorism." On a day when fellow UN member nation Iran opened a conference to question whether Nazi Germany actually killed Jews in gas chambers, Kofi Annan's protest speech becomes even more hilarious. It's the context that sometimes lends humor to good knee-slapper of a joke. Iran may hold an...

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his farewell address, criticized the Bush administration, warning that America must not sacrifice its Democratic ideals while waging war against terrorism. In remarks prepared for delivery Monday at the Truman Presidential Museum and Library, Annan also said the Security Council should be expanded. “Human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity,” Annan’s text said. When the U.S. “appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused,” he said. Annan, who leaves the United Nations on Dec. 31 after 10...