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Former President Jimmy Carter and former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari were hoping to visit the State Department this week to brief officials on their recent trip to North Korea, but nobody at the State Department was available to meet with them. Carter and Ahtisaari, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates, had been eager to give their readout of their meetings in North Korea April 26 and 27 to U.S. officials and press their case for a resumption of food aid to the Hermit Kingdom. The two are members of the Elders, a group of senior figures who have been informally engaging...

It is time for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to step up to the plate and investigate Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, who is currently touring the Middle East at the expense of American Taxpayers as an envoy of her Department of State. Claudia Rossett, one of America's premier journalists, today reveals several disturbing facts that more than warrant an official investigation: ...what's going on with the web site of his Cordoba Initiative? Last week, after someone in his Malaysia office referred all questions back to his office in New York, the phone number and address of his office in Malaysia...

Former United Nations chief Kofi Annan on Tuesday urged the world's richest nations to take the lead in tackling the impact of global warming on developing countries. Annan said attempts to forge a global agreement on climate change by the end of the year should focus on the "overwhelming destruction that climate change is causing and will continue to cause" on the world's 50 poorest nations. Yet the least developed countries account for just one percent of greenhouse gases, according to a recent report by Annan's Global Humanitarian Forum. "It is this injustice -- as well as the urgency and...

Global warming alarmists are fond of invoking the authority of experts against the skepticism of supposedly amateur detractors -- a.k.a. "deniers." So when one of those experts says that a recent report on the effects of climate change is "worse than fiction, it is a lie," the alarmists should, well, be alarmed. The latest contretemps pits former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, now president of the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, against Roger Pielke, Jr., an expert in disaster trends at the University of Colorado. Mr. Annan's outfit issued a lengthy report late last month warning that climate change-induced disasters, such...

President Obama’s pick for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, is being urged to lay the foundation for “global governance” by considering “international taxation” measures to loot more money from U.S. taxpayers. The recommendation is included in the report, “The Global Agenda 2009,” which is being considered by the World Economic Forum (WEF), meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 28th - February 1st. The WEF is not an official government group but does include dozens of government, corporate and labor leaders at its annual meetings. Media companies such as News Corporation (parent of Fox News, the Fox Business Network, and the Wall Street...

Now that Hillary Clinton has been confirmed as Secretary of State, the Obama administration will announce Thursday two high-profile appointments -- former senate majority leader George Mitchell (D-Me.) as Middle East envoy and former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke as envoy for Afghanistan, Pakistan "and related matters," sources close to the administration said. Mitchell will be charged with rebuilding the Middle East peace process in the wake of the three weeks of violence between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Holbrooke will take on the difficult job of soothing relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, whose border is a haven for...

<p>Fox news ran stories last night based on some of the things we were tracking right here in this post. Here is their on line story.</p> <p>As unfinished as my research is, I feel compelled to release what I've found so far as the story cannot wait any longer.  I am not looking for a scoop on anyone or anything, but at the same time I don't want anyone thinking I made this stuff up after the fact either.</p>

x-Fed Chief to Lead New Economic Panel of Outside Experts Who Will Brief Obama President-elect Barack Obama appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker on Wednesday to be the chairman of a new White House advisory board tasked with helping to lift the nation from recession and stabilize financial markets. University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, one of Mr. Obama's longest-serving policy advisers, will serve as the board's staff director, along with his duties as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Members of the panel will be drawn from a cross-section of citizens outside the government,...

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter today said Zimbabwe's humanitarian crisis was far worse than he could have imagined and expressed dismay that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his government refused to acknowledge the problem even existed. "The entire basic structure in education, healthcare, feeding people, social services and sanitation has broken down," Carter told a news conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. "These are all indications that the crisis in Zimbabwe is much greater, much worse than we had ever imagined." Carter was part of a delegation that was denied entry into Zimbabwe last week to assess the crisis. The delegation...

Zimbabwe has refused to let Kofi Annan and two eminent colleagues visit the impoverished African country for a humanitarian mission, the three said Saturday. The former U.N. secretary-general, ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and rights advocate Graca Machel had planned to assess the country's needs. They are members of The Elders group, formed by former South African President Nelson Mandela to foster peace and tackle world conflicts.

I'm actually beginning to think had Hillary won there would be fewer Clinton retreads coming on-board. Where the change? The bold innovative thinking? Are former Clinton hacks the best you can do, Barry? Geez, at this rate I almost expect Lani Guinier to be nominated for something. It's almost as if they had some incriminating photos of the guy. No, instead of this mythical change, we get a guy who sent Elian Gonzalez back to hell. Craig, 63, is a partner at Williams & Connolly and a protégé of the late Edward Bennett Williams, the legendary Washington power lawyer. His...

Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama, according to Democratic officials. Craig is intimately familiar with the president-elect’s record because he played the role of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in debate preparations. The officials said Obama has settled on Craig but were not sure when the appointment would be announced. The choice gives the president-elect both experience and loyalty. During the primaries, Craig was an early Clinton alumni defector to Obama. Columnist Robert D. Novak reported back in the winter of 2007 that...

Another Celebrity Endorsement for Barack Obama Fresh from a no-Jews-allowed “Global Dialog” conference with the mullahs in Tehran, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announces his endorsement of Barack Obama: AFP: Former UN chief mulls ‘phenomenal’ Obama presidency. ====================================== DUBLIN (AFP) — A US presidential poll victory for Barack Obama would be “phenomenal,” former UN chief Kofi Annan said Thursday, adding that whoever wins needs to learn the lessons of the last eight years. ... When asked if the United States and the world was ready for a black US president, he said: “I think it would be a phenomenal...

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...

Kenya's political rivals agreed Thursday to write a new constitution within a year as part of a deal to end postelection violence ... In Washington, President Bush said he will dispatch Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Kenya... Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, who is mediating in the Kenya crisis, has hammered out a deal ... "The two parties agreed to write a new constitution," ... Opposition leader Raila Odinga ...

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan may walk away from Kenya's peace talks after his security detail discovered his hotel room in Nairobi was bugged, according to a report. Sources at the Serena Hotel, where the talks are taking place, said Annan's security detail became wary of his safety after discovering that his personal conversations were being intercepted, South Africa's Independent Newspapers reported. Who may have planted the listening device and how long it was there remain unclear, the Independent reported. Annan is said to be "livid," but it is not yet known whether he will walk away from the already...

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....

A former ABC News consultant fired last year because he couldn't authenticate academic credentials is at the center of a new dispute over apparently faked interviews with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Gates and others. The consultant, Alexis Debat, quit the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank, on Wednesday after Obama's representatives claimed an interview with the senator appearing under Debat's byline in the French magazine Politique Internationale never took place. The interview quoted the Democratic presidential candidate as saying the Iraq war was "a defeat for America." Pelosi, Gates, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former United Nations Secretary-General...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, July 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - World famous opponent of South African apartheid, Nelson Mandela, celebrated his 89th birthday last Wednesday by announcing the formation of a Global council of elders, known simply as "The Elders."So far The Elders includes Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Mary Robinson, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Muhammad Yunus, Ela Bhatt, Graca Machel, and, of course, Nelson Mandela.  The group of high-profile international leaders is intended to be an independent body of "wise" men and women that will use their combined experience to solve any of the host of problems currently...

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....