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UNESCO Unhinged Malcolm A. Kline, November 4, 2009 Not content to merely soak up billions of tax dollars it cannot account for and excuse the actions of totalitarian regimes around the world, the United Nations has come up with guidelines for sex education in countries such as the one that hosts the UN. “In the guidelines, UNESCO tells teachers around the world to present abstinence until marriage as ‘only one of a range of choices available to young people’ in order to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases,” The Education Reporter reports. “The guidelines have children ages five to eight...

Children As Young As Five To Learn About Masturbation and Abortion Under New UN Guidelines By KIRSTY WALKER 10th September 2009 Children as young as five should be taught about explicit sex acts, according to guidelines from the United Nations. The advice also calls for youngsters to learn about abortion, same-sex relationships and sexually transmitted diseases. The draft report on sex education has been compiled by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. Too young? Children as young as five could be taught about masturbation if UNESCO guidelines are followed (file photo) The guidance is due to be...

SNIPPET: "The new head of the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), an agency that gets 22 percent of its regular $600 million-plus annual budget from U.S. taxpayers, will be selected in a process that involves behind-closed-doors interviewing and a secret ballot vote." SNIPPET: "Farouk Hosni, who has been Egypt’s culture minister for more than two decades, leads a nine-strong field of hopefuls. He leads largely because he has the backing of the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the African Union, and because Arab governments say it is the Arab world’s turn." SNIPPET:...

New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- A new report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been roundly criticized since its release. Now, a new analysis of the 94-page documents finds the UN agency is calling for children to promote abortions across the globe.The analysis finds children are not only told about abortion and where to obtain one but encouraged to be trained to “advocate” the pro-abortion position.The report, entitled International Guidelines on Sexual Education, is filled with advice for sex education instructors to advance the abortion agenda. It calls on making children as young as...

NEW YORK — The United Nations is recommending that children as young as five receive mandatory sexual education that would teach even pre-kindergarteners about masturbation and topics like gender violence. The U.N.'s Economic, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) released a 98-page report in June offering a universal lesson plan for kids ranging in age from 5-18, an "informed approach to effective sex, relationships" and HIV education that they say is essential for "all young people." The U.N. insists the program is "age appropriate," but critics say it's exposing kids to sex far too early, and offers up abstract ideas —...

Libya’s sudden decision to end its years in the international wilderness and embrace the West has abruptly transformed one of the world’s most isolated countries. Iason Athanasiadis reports from a nation in flux There is something of the pasha in Khalifa Mahdaoui, a descendant of one of Libya’s most influential tribes. It is not just the red fez perched on his head as he ambles in his suit and tie from his ground-floor office to the trellised porch outside, lights a menthol cigarette and takes a sip from the dainty cup of Turkish coffee delivered by an aide.The impression is...

How should the international community punish North Korea after Monday’s nuclear tests? While the Security Council of the United Nations was busy crafting a resolution to admonish the communist nation, the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization gave them their third biosphere reserve. Mount Myohyang takes the cake as one of the weirder additions to the 22 world biosphere reserves announced on Tuesday. It’s the only place on earth where can you gaze through a glass case at a stuffed crocodile with a cocktail tray while breathing in the fresh air of the “Mountain of Mysterious Fragrance.” The basis for...

BEIRUT (AFP) — As Beirut prepares to don the mantle of UNESCO "World Book Capital City 2009," Arabic novels are enjoying an unprecedented boom across the Middle East, breaking taboos on topics such as sex and religion. The Lebanese capital was chosen as the world's literary centre this year "in the light of its focus on cultural diversity, dialogue and tolerance," according to the UNESCO selection committee. There is no shortage of literary fodder as book readings and launches are scheduled across Beirut daily for the last week of April. Among books being showcased will be a wealth of latest...

A UNESCO mission has visited northern Iraq, with transport and security arranged by American troops. The specialists visited four key sites -- Nimrud, Ninevah, Ashur and Hatra -- and found no evidence of recent looting. This was the first UNESCO inspection since the 2003 invasion. The visit, which for security reasons was not publicised at the time, was from 18-25 November. Details of their findings were later released by Dr Suzanne Bott, a US State Department cultural heritage advisor based at Mosul, in Ninewa province. UNESCO confirmed the mission had taken place, saying that it had been organised by the...

The Knights Templar are demanding that the Vatican give them back their good name and, possibly, billions in assets into the bargain, 700 years after the order was brutally suppressed by a joint venture between the Pope and the King of France. If the Holy See doesn’t comply, the warrior knights, renowned for liberating the Holy Land, will deploy that most fearsome of weapons: a laborious court case through the creaking Spanish legal system. The Daily Telegraph reports that The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ has launched a court case in Spain, demanding Pope Benedict...

Executive Summary The United Nations is celebrating its 40th anniversary amid much hoopla and endless expressions of goodwill. Last month dozens of heads of state descended on New York for the opening of the 40th session of the General Assembly; scores more are expected for the official commemorative festivities the week of October 21. Despite widespread and withering criticism of the institution in recent years--in September Singapore's foreign minister, Suppiah Dhanabalan, told the General Assembly that the UN's prestige "is at an all time low"[1]--hope burns eternal. Austrian ambassador Thomas Klestil recently reaffirmed his nation's support for the international body:...

James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, posits in his new book Who Owns Antiquity? (Princeton University Press, $24.95) that the UNESCO treaty and laws enacted around the world aimed at applying its principles have done nothing to stop looting and have succeeded only in inhibiting the global movement of art. UNESCO, he argues, has impoverished our understanding of one another and contributed to a stale, narrowly nationalistic view of culture. More specifically, these laws have prevented museums like his from acquiring antiquities as they have in the past. He calls them "nationalist retentionist cultural property...

Excerpt from NJ101.5 "The legislature can't cure the problem," says State Senator Loretta Weinberg, "The only thing we can cure with legislation is to make sure that people know they can't act on those biases." Weinberg sponsors a bill scheduled for a vote today in the full Senate that would amend the law concerning the crime of bias intimidation to specifically provide that "gender identity or expression" and "national origin" are within the protected classes set forth in the statute. Currently a bias crime based on gender identity or expression or national origin can be prosecuted using the protected classes...

Critics have long believed environmentalists were planning global domination. The problem with making a credible case against such an ambitious plan was simple: no environmental leader had published one. Yet conflicts over global warming, world trade, multinational corporations, population control, sustainable futures, and transnational government left little doubt that environmentalists in fact shared the unspoken aim of wielding supreme power over a green future. But there was no proof. For years, critics, lacking hard evidence, were reduced to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of suspicious environmentalist actions - funding from huge charitable trusts, ties to the broader "progressive" community, and...

Commentary: China silently nuclearizing South Asia MANIPAL, Sep. 17 M.D. NALAPAT Column: Future Present In 1999 this columnist put forward the theory of a "proxy nuclear state," a country that has had nuclear capability grafted onto it by an outside power. Thus far, China has developed two such states -- North Korea (to harry Japan) and Pakistan (to contain India). A third, Bangladesh, is well on the way, with Iran a likely candidate for a future in which tensions with the United States reach the 1950s level. China's warming strategic relationship with Russia has resulted in Moscow going along as...

Seven years ago, it was a place of serene contemplation. Now it is a vast, gaping chasm, filled with dust, noise and what looks like rubble, with signs warning that hard hats must be worn. This is the niche which used to house the one of the world's tallest Buddhas - 55 metres high. In it you can still see slight swellings where its feet used to be, and ghostly traces of where the head and neck were. In the early morning light, a huge bulldozer shifts massive blocks of the destroyed colossus, already labelled and classified, into undercover storage...

Egypt is scoffing at a global contest to name the new seven wonders of the world, saying it is a disgrace that the ancient Pyramids of Giza — the only surviving structure from the traditional list of architectural marvels — must compete for a spot. ADVERTISEMENT Top Egyptian officials have criticized the popular contest that urges people around the world to vote for their top sites from a list of 21 finalists that lumps the pyramids with upstart wonders like the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower and Peru's Machu Picchu. The pyramids are "living in the hearts of people...

On September 10, 2003 in Prague at the International Conference on Education for a Sustainable Future, the United Nations declared 2005 through 2015, "The Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)." To nobody's surprise, the UN also named UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) as the lead agency for this global effort. The official launch ceremony took place on March 1, 2005 in New York City.1 Few Americans paid attention. They should have.

Brian Steidle's only weapons against mass killing were his pen, paper, and camera. The former Marine captain catalogs what they caught in Darfur, Sudan, with quick-fire urgency: toddlers with their faces smashed in, men castrated and left to bleed to death, charred bodies of villagers locked in huts later burned down. Charged only with monitoring ceasefire violations in the war-wracked region, he soon grew weary of playing spectator to genocide. So after six months, the 28-year-old Mr. Steidle returned to the United States a month ago and launched his own offensive to stop the killing. In mid-March he criss-crossed Washington,...

New York, 3 August (AKI) - With violence escalating in Afghanistan, the head of the United Nations cultural agency has condemned a suicide bomb attack in Kandahar that killed a television cameraman and several other civilians, saying he was "particularly horrified" as the bombers had waited for a crowd to gather to inflict maximum suffering. "The killing of civilians is completely unacceptable and the targeting of media professionals is particularly reprehensible," said Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO. Abdul Qodus, a cameraman for the privately-owned TV station Aryana, and a driver employed by the same company, were killed when a Taleban...

The 2,500-year-old Persian tablets, which have been studied for decades at the University of Chicago, give a unique insight into the workings of the Persian empire with cuneiform etchings of payments and rations made to priests, guards and workers... those still under study are at the center of an Israeli compensation suit connected to a shooting in the West Bank blamed on an Iranian-backed group. A U.S. court has ruled that Iran's assets can be seized and last month a U.S. judge upheld the ruling, prompting a new campaign by Iran to secure the tablets' return, including an appeal to...

Since the story broke yesterday about finding 500 Shells of Chemical Weapons in Iraq, shells that contain Sulfur Mustard Gas or Sarin Gas, the Left and their media were quick to dismiss this extremely important find by using the lame excuse that these Chemical weapons Shells were produced before 1991 and hence its not effective anymore because it has much lower quality”. However in March 2003 UN report about Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction there is the following on page 77 (Page 79 of the pdf file), paragraph 1 of the report http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/6mar.pdf : “ The Sulfur Mustard contained in...

05-05-2006 10:00 am “Might everything disappear? Species, languages, cultures, values…” is the theme to be debated at the next 21st Century Talks to be held at UNESCO on 9 May 2006 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm, (Room II). Chaired by the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, and moderated by Jérôme Bindé, Deputy Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences and Director of the Division of Foresight the talks will bring together four personalities of international renown. Jean Baudrillard teaches sociology at the Universities of Paris IX and X and lectures internationally. His numerous published works include: The Consumer Society: Myths and...

BABYLON, Iraq - In this ancient city, it is hard to tell what are ruins and what is just ruined. Crumbling mud-brick buildings, some 2,500 years old, look like smashed sandcastles at the beach. Signs of military occupation are everywhere: trenches, bullet casings, shiny coils of razor wire and blast walls stamped "This side Scud protection." Babylon, the city with the million- dollar name, has paid the price of war. It has been ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected and roughly occupied. Archaeologists said American soldiers had even used soil thick with priceless artifacts to stuff sandbags. But Iraqi...

The UN's "Borderless" WorldBy Joseph KleinFrontPageMagazine.com | April 24, 2006 While pro-immigrant rallies get most of the attention from the mainstream press, many law-abiding American citizens are fed up with the reality of tens of thousands of foreign nationals every few weeks continuing to enter this country illegally through our porous borders, added to the more than 11 million illegal aliens who are already here.  Americans are bearing a grossly disproportionate share of the security risks and economic costs associated with such migration, which makes it a national problem for Americans to solve through their elected representatives and through voluntary...

Auschwitz name change proposal angers Jewish community Poland’s request to UNESCO for the name of Auschwitz to be changed on the World Heritage List to the Nazi-German Concentration Camp has met with criticism from the international Jewish community. Michal Kubicki reports 11.04.06 Poland has asked the UN culture organization UNESCO to describe the former Auschwitz camp as ‘Nazi’ and ‘German’ in the UNESCO list of heritage sites. UESCO is to respond to the request by the end of June. In Germany the proposal has provoked mixed reactions. At present the site of the former camp is listed as the “Auschwitz...

Knowing that there is a widespread misconception about the origin of and operation of the Nazi German Auschwitz Birkenau death camps, the Polish government is taking steps to change the name of the camps to emphasize that the camps were Nazi German facilities. This proposal to change the name has met with resistance from some quarters. At the same time it has stirred a sudden debate in Poland that has raised the ire of both the Jewish people who were prisoners at the camp, Polish veterans groups and the families of Polish people who were also prisoners at the camps....

Left’s Utopia Totalitarian Hell on Earth Lurking within the twisted corridors of the left’s collective mind dwells the seductive image of a glorious utopia. Leftists are certain that with their Promethean genius they could build an earthly utopia if they could but acquire total control over the world, its wealth, resources, and every human person. The infuriating stumbling block is Americans who hold traditional values. These Americans refuse to worship the ''new gods''…the Promethean Left… and vigorously cling to their individuality and inalienable rights. For these reasons, the left—driven by malignant envy and seething rage—has been waging an all-out ''slash...

Researcher Cliff Kincaid has devoted his life in recent years to studying what is happening at the United Nations. He fortunately has a strong stomach. This amalgamation of nations which continually is envious of the prosperity of the United States convenes to debate new ways that we can be taxed for their benefit. A few months ago the UN had its sights firmly on the Internet. Thanks to Kincaid and others these designs were exposed early on and the UN was forced temporarily to back off taxation of the Internet. The retreat is only tactical - one step back to...

It may also be noted that another U.N. organization, the U.N. Educational and Social Committee (UNESCO) just recently awarded President HUGO CHAVEZ of Venezuela a human rights award, presented by none other than Cuban dictator FIDEL CASTRO. This would be laughable were it not so outrageous.

The New York Times has never been a big fan of John Bolton, but the Gray Lady has come out in support of his efforts to shake up the ineffectual U.N. Human Rights Commission. "When it comes to reforming the disgraceful United Nations Human Rights Commission, America’s ambassador, John Bolton, is right,” the Times declares in an editorial. "Secretary General Kofi Annan is wrong, and leading international human rights groups have unwisely put their preference for multilateral consensus ahead of their duty to fight for the strongest possible human rights protection.” Some of the world’s worst violators of basic human...

US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton is known for his radical views on the world body. The combative diplomat has never taken kindly of its activities. The Group of 77 developing countries are angry over his strong views on reshaping the UN by cutting its budget and tightening its role. His very often contemptuous stand has rattled US allies, such as Britain. Even American senators expressed their displeasure by refusing to confirm his nomination as UN ambassador. President George W. Bush had to resort to circumvention to get him the UN posting. As a fierce UN critic, Bolton...

"We believe that mental health is just as important as physical health maybe even more so."5 Donna Shalala, former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services "Mental health refers to how a person thinks, feels, and acts when faced with life's situations." National Mental Health Services Knowledge Exchange Network [link now obsolete] "The challenge to humanity is to adopt new ways of thinking, new ways of acting, new ways of organizing itself in society in short, new ways of living."20 Our Creative Diversity, UNESCO Don't be deceived by nice sounding labels such as Healthy Start, Healthy People, Healthy...

UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. agency is in the middle of an escalating war of words between Washington and Caracas after awarding President Chavez of Venezuela its $5,000 Jose Marti prize, bestowed in Havana by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The prize, given by the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and, according to its Web site, intended to promote the heritage and values of Latin America, has been obscured from the public eye for more than a decade. As Friday's awards ceremony became an occasion for spreading anti-American sentiment, the Marti prize, and Unesco's choice of Mr. Chavez as its...

HAVANA - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, receiving a U.N. prize handed over by Fidel Castro on Friday, said Washington was right to be concerned by Latin America's tilt to the left because it represents a threat to the U.S. "empire." Chavez was visiting Havana amid an intensifying propaganda war between Washington and Latin America's leftist leaders. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld compared Chavez to Adolf Hitler and warned darkly Thursday about populist leadership in Bolivia and Cuba. "They are right to be worried, because they know what's happening here," Chavez said in a speech lasting more than 2 1/2...

UNESCO bestows 2006 José Martí International Award on President Chávez PARIS, Dec. 14—Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías is the recipient of UNESCO 2005 José Martí International Award, granted by a jury made up of outstanding international individuals, according to an announcement issued today by that organization in this capital. The José Martí Award was created in 1994 by the UNESCO Executive Council in tribute to Cuba’s national hero and founding father of its independence. According to its guidelines, it is “aimed at promoting and rewarding a particularly meritorious activity that, according to the ideals and spirit of José Martí and...

"Not too many years ago, Americans had never heard of sensitivity training, and if a facilitator of it had tried to convince them that they needed to be conditioned by it, he would have been told, very quickly and in no uncertain terms, to take a hike.  However, step by careful step, sensitivity training began to be stealthily inserted into our society.  Today, Americans simply submit to it without much thought, let alone any protest."  ("Psychopolitics: Joe Six-Pack and the Crocodile" Linda Kimball)   Sensitivity training, hate-crime laws, political correctness, multiculturalism, and the group dynamics and/or 'facilitated consensus process'---all of...

Russia supports new international alliance - foreign minister 14:53 | 11/ 10/ 2005 PARIS, October 11 (RIA Novosti) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday the harmonious coexistence of different cultures between and within countries was the main goal of the coming decade. "The terrorist attacks in recent years have highlighted the problem," Lavrov said in an address to the 33rd session of the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco) in the French capital. During his Monday visit in Spain, Lavrov confirmed Russia's support for a Turkish-Spanish initiative to create an Alliance of Civilizations, which is designed to...

On Jan. 22, 1997, President Bill Clinton made a speech to a suburban Chicago audience so friendly that it interrupted him with applause 29 times. One line in his speech, however, was greeted with stony silence: "We can no longer hide behind our love of local control of the schools." Clinton is gone from the White House, but the federalization laws of his administration - Goals 2000, School-to-Work, and Workforce Investment - are still in place. President George W. Bush, who says the federal government has "a role to play in education," has merely substituted labels more comforting to Republicans:...

On Jan. 22, 1997, President Bill Clinton made a speech to a suburban Chicago audience so friendly that it interrupted him with applause 29 times. One line in his speech, however, was greeted with stony silence: "We can no longer hide behind our love of local control of the schools." Clinton is gone from the White House, but the federalization laws of his administration - Goals 2000, School-to-Work, and Workforce Investment - are still in place. President George W. Bush, who says the federal government has "a role to play in education," has merely substituted labels more comforting to Republicans:...

UNESCO head Koichiro Matsuura, who announced the list of 43 traditions, said he was glad it included developing countries from Africa and elsewhere. Cultural traditions are chosen based upon their risk of disappearing, as well as their cultural value and importance to their communities. "Despite the vitality and the strength of these cultural expressions," he said at UNESCO's Paris headquarters, "they are many that need urgent and immediate safeguarding." The list was the third issued by the U.N. organization, and "will probably be the last," a UNESCO statement said. Countries submitted 64 applications this year, which the agency whittled down...

On October 20 the U.N.'s cultural wing, UNESCO adopted an insidious treaty to preserve the world's "cultural security" — a locution concocted by U.N. Chinese delegates in support of the proposition that culturally weak nations should be able to protect against the influence of culturally powerful ones by barring cultural imports and subsidizing their own culture. The vote in Paris was 148-2, with only the United States and Israel opposed. This latest French- and Canadian-instigated folie by UNESCO, with its history of corruption and anti-Americanism, could ignite the mother of all culture wars and shackle free cultural interchange. The agreement...

TUNIS, Tunisia - A U.N. technology summit was focused Thursday on bringing more communications, including Internet access, to developing countries where the cost has been too high and the technology too low-tech. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Senegalese President H.E. Wade were among the leaders scheduled to address the World Summit on the Information Society, which ends on Friday. At the same time, several companies and organizations were unveiling their plans to bring the world closer and, in a sense, narrow the digital divide, by providing laptops that cost just US$100 (euro85) to portable, satellite-based radios that can pull in...

You had to go outside the United States to catch some of the outrage. The Vancouver Sun editorialized: "Canada and France championed the treaty, whose effect is to ensure that cultural products (yes, those foul movies and music videos the United States exports to eager consumers around the world) aren't covered under free-trade agreements and can be subsidized, tariffed, regulated and generally mauled in any way governments choose." From Tinseltown, the Los Angeles Times did write an editorial suggesting France and Canada were "ardent advocates" protecting their own media industries from "the onslaught of tasteless American media," and predicted that...

On Oct. 20, by a vote of 148 to 2, the United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) approved the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (preliminary draft).Only the U.S and Israel dissented. The Convention will be in force after ratification by 30 governments. Before that happens, the U.S. should withdraw from UNESCO as it did in 1984. ......Presumably this means subsidies, tariffs, and other trade barriers.The State Department has expressed concern that the CCD could become "a basis for impermissible new barriers to trade in goods, services, or agricultural products that might...

Harriet Miers's nomination, the Iraqi referendum, rumors of resignations among top White House staff -- news junkies have had a busy week. Comes now another intriguing story meriting attention. A United Nations agency is helping spearhead an effort to punish the US for too-successfully exporting its films, music and other cultural products around the world. Since at least 1998, bureaucrats in several dozen countries -- including US allies such as Canada and the UK -- have been quietly working to craft a global cultural protectionism treaty. They have gathered annually at meetings of an inter-governmental group called the International Network...

Last Thursday, the United States was sucker-punched by an international organization. A majority of countries belonging to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to support a joint French and Canadian initiative aimed at making it easier for foreign governments to limit consumer access to American cultural products. Most newspapers that covered the story portrayed the vote as a humiliation for the United States. (Indeed, the vote wasn’t even close—only the U.S. and Israel dissented.) The International Herald Tribune, for example, blared in its headline, “U.S. All but Alone in Opposing UNESCO Cultural Pact.” An A.P. story...

France claimed a significant victory last night in its relentless battle against the march of American culture with the adoption of internationally-backed protections. Supported notably by Canada, France was the driving force behind a "cultural diversity" convention agreed by 148 of the 154 countries which took part in the vote at the Paris general conference of the United Nations arts and culture agency, Unesco. America was virtually isolated, with Israel the only other country to vote against the treaty and four nations abstaining. It failed to force through a series of amendments to weaken the text, which reaffirms the rights...

PARIS - UNESCO's member nations voted overwhelmingly Thursday to approve a pact on protecting cultural diversity after a bitter debate left the United States isolated in opposition to what it sees as a threat to sales of American movies and music. The convention — championed by the European Union and Canada — aims to promote ethnic traditions and minority languages and to protect those local cultures from the negative effects of globalization, UNESCO said. The United States argued the convention could be used to erect trade barriers against cultural exports such as films and pop music as well as indirectly...

The French campaign against the global tide of American entertainment will take a big stride forward today when almost every nation backs the first world convention on protecting culture. Most of the 191 members of Unesco, the United Nations’ cultural agency, are expected to vote for a “convention on cultural diversity”, which enshrines on a global level France’s longstanding policy of subsidising its arts and imposing quotas on American films and music. The vote will be a big defeat for the United States, which held out against the plan with partial backing from Israel, Australia and Japan. The convention could...