The UN idea of 'investigation'

Interesting video on what the UN seems to expect from its internal 'investigators'. Not that we'd expect anything better from the UN.

 

COP17

Claire Lemaire has a useful Brussels Signal piece on COP17. 

EU wants money from ‘oil-rich countries’ for biodiversity ahead of COP17

The European Union is aiming for “financial commitments from oil-rich countries” to support global biodiversity efforts ahead of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17), scheduled in Armenia in 2026...

Analysts say the EU’s push reflects recognition that relying solely on traditional donors will not meet the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework.

COP17 in Armenia will test the international community’s ability to bridge political divides and unlock finance from unconventional sources.


Of course this is not the other COP17 to be held in 2026 in Ulaanbaatar the capital city of Mongolia, although coincidentally they want money as well.

COP17, set for 2026 during the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) — declared by the United Nations General Assembly and championed by Mongolia — will build on efforts to promote the sustainable management, restoration and conservation of rangelands.

UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

UN report finds — UN reports are not widely read

A United Nations report seeking ways to improve efficiency and cut costs has revealed: U.N. reports are not widely read.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres briefed countries on Friday on the report, produced by his UN80 reform that focused on how U.N. staff implement thousands of mandates given to them by bodies like the General Assembly or Security Council.

He said last year that the U.N. system supported 27,000 meetings involving 240 bodies, and the U.N. secretariat produced 1,100 reports, a 20% increase since 1990.


An outsider is bound to suspect that UN reports are not compiled to be widely read. The U.N. secretariat doesn't necessarily expect anyone at all to read those 1,100 reports once they have been issued. The function of a bureaucracy is to produce reports, not necessarily reports which are widely read, or even read at all.

Even if they haven't been read, those U.N. reports are available to be referred to in the future, to preload debates should the need arise. 

Court makes bad weather illegal

UN's top court says healthy environment is a human right in historic climate ruling

A "clean, healthy and sustainable environment" is a human right and, if countries fail to take "appropriate action to protect the climate system", they could be in violation of international law, according to the UN's top court.

Judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have just delivered a long-awaited advisory opinion on nations' climate obligations and the consequences they face if they don't fulfil them...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

It also said that countries harmed by climate change could also be entitled to reparations, but what they are owed must be decided on a case-by-case basis.

They never disappoint do they?

Starmer endorses

Starmer endorses UN’s high-tax manifesto

Labour has paved the way for higher taxes on the wealthy, alcohol and fossil fuels by signing Britain up to a new United Nations pact.

Ministers have endorsed the global agreement, which calls for greater environmental levies and “gender-responsive taxation”.

The UK’s participation represents another break with Donald Trump, who pulled the US out of the deal over concerns about its provisions on tax...

Gareth Davies, the shadow Treasury minister, accused Labour of “outsourcing tax policy to organisations that don’t reflect the priorities of the British people”.

“People want to see their taxes reduced and simplified, not increased and complicated to fund vacuous virtue signalling by global elites,” he said.


Er - yes Gareth - been going on for a long time - Tories, Labour, Lib Dem...

Starmer would endorse it, unlike Trump he's incapable of not endorsing it and no doubt Rishi Sunak would have endorsed it too. 

It's useful to look at it that way round, in terms of conditioning. From what we have available to us in the public domain, Starmer's adult life seems to have conditioned him to endorse this kind of legal and bureaucratic expansion by the UN. He won't have analysed it dispassionately because he can't.

Analysing it from the perspective of a UK Prime Minister and the interests of the people he supposedly represents is not something Starmer can do. From one perspective it's because he doesn't want to, from another perspective it's because he can't - but it's the same thing. 

Starmer is incapable of being the UK Prime Minister, he's a member of the global nomenklatura, joined the party years ago.

 

Unilateral coercive measures

General Assembly Proclaims 4 December International Day against Unilateral Coercive Measures, Elects Members to United Nations Commission on International Trade Law

Introducing that draft, Eritrea’s representative, speaking for the Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United Nations, said that such measures — commonly cloaked in the misleading language of sanctions — are not instruments of justice, but “tools of political and economic compulsion”...

Expressing solidarity with Cuba and its people, Yván Gil Pinto, Minister of Popular Power for Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, said that unilateral coercive measures infringe on the sovereign and inalienable rights of States to choose their economic system without coercion. The humanitarian exceptions to these measures are a “fantasy” he said, calling for the establishment of a “safe space” free of such measures.


Of course, Yván Gil Pinto, Minister of Popular Power for Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, does not mean all unilateral coercive measures. In particular, he does not mean those internal measures used by his government. When applied internally to Venezuela, his concept of a “safe space” has a rather different meaning too. 

'From criminal hub to energy hub': Machado touts a post-dictatorship Venezuela

Venezuela is still firmly in the grip of a socialist dictatorship. But the country's popular opposition leader hopes to hasten the regime’s fall — in part by selling Venezuela’s big capitalist potential.

María Corina Machado is in hiding from the regime in Venezuela. But Thursday morning she appeared on a Zoom videoconference, hosted by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, touting a major economic plan for post-dictatorship Venezuela.

The declowning begins

Keir Starmer UN speech - live: PM to meet Donald Trump before tonight’s address amid Middle East conflict

Sir Keir Starmer is set to meet Donald Trump in New York before delivering a speech to world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

As part of a raft of bilateral meetings, he will discuss ongoing conflicts between Israel, Lebanon and Palestine with world leaders and US presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

The prime minister will use tonight’s address to say that the UK is returning to “responsible global leadership” because it is in British interests to address problems around the world.

An attempt to declown "Sir" Keir Starmer which may or may not be successful, it depends how his speech goes. 

Obviously “responsible global leadership” is the latest wheeze of Team Starmer, probably dreamed up while on the way there. Maybe he could try responsible national leadership first though - just a suggestion.

Not only the science, but the scientists too

A dark day

'A dark day for UK human rights,' says UN adviser after Just Stop Oil activists jailed

Protesters now face up to two years in prison, but there has been international condemnation of the increasing severity of sentences for non-violent protest.

Five Just Stop Oil activists have just been jailed for up to two years after they climbed gantries over the M25 motorway and caused temporary gridlock.

The whole country would go dark if Just Stop Oil were to have their way.

Agenda Flags

UN reveals animal species under threat of extinction

Some 97% of fish are also at risk of being wiped out - with humans posing the biggest threat through hunting, fishing and other forms of exploitation.


It's interesting how headlines such as this have become flags for worthless content. In this case it's the phrase "UN reveals" - as if the UN is revealing some incontrovertible conclusions securely based on scientific integrity.

Yet anyone paying attention knows well enough that the phrase "UN reveals" is an agenda flag. The UN has a global agenda and publishes nothing outside that agenda. 

Certainly there are threats of extinction across the whole biosphere, with a complex array of causes, but the UN fosters its agenda before anything else. Scientific integrity comes nowhere, it too is under threat of extinction.

And nobody is likely to be surprised

UK pauses funding to UNRWA over claims staff were involved in Hamas attack

Israel has alleged that 12 members of the UN's Gaza aid group participated in Hamas' 7 October attack. The UK's decision comes after the US, Italy, Australia and Canada all also suspended additional funding for the UN aid agency.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said on Friday it sacked "several" employees over accusations by Israel that 12 employees were involved in the 7 October attack.


Meanwhile here in the UK, UN sponsored climate nonsense threatens our ability to generate electricity reliably as well as fostering all the racketeering, scams, stupidity and lies associated with it. All attributable to UN sponsorship of deranged Malthusian politics within the developed world.

Oh - and nobody is likely to be surprised if these allegations are substantiated, which the UNRWA sackings do tend to confirm already.

Time to stonewall the UN

Andrew Tettenborn has an interesting CAPX piece on Stonewall’s spat with the EHRC and an attempt by Stonewall to undermine the EHRC via the UN.


Time to stonewall the UN?

The Equality and Human Rights Commission represents an unsung success of this government. Set up in 2006 by Tony Blair as an umbrella super-agency to promote and enforce human rights and non-discrimination, by 2020 it had become, in effect, a progressive pressure-group led by a self-perpetuating leftism drawn from the genteel quangocracy. In that year, however, Liz Truss, then Women and Equalities Minister, riled the establishment by shaking it up, appointing four new Commissioners who did not come from that class, and later a new Chair, Baroness Falkner, a woman of impeccably balanced liberal views and independent mind, who does not suffer fools or grifters gladly.

The new moderate EHRC is, however, now under regular attack from progressives determined to regain control of it. The latest assault comes from Stonewall, once a respectable gay rights organisation, but now a tiresomely shrill trans activist pressure group. This is an attack that can be fought off, but the government needs to keep a cool head.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of the Eric Hoffer quote -

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

Stonewall’s spat with the EHRC arose in April this year, over women-only spaces and the issue of whether a person who self-declared as female had a right to be admitted to them. Having weighed submissions from all sides, including women’s organisations that wished to keep such spaces free from biological males, the EHRC recommended amending the sex discrimination legislation to make it clear that sex meant biological sex rather than chosen gender. In other words, the mere fact that you said you were a woman (or a man) should not guarantee you a legal right to be treated by all and sundry as if you were. This recommendation was accepted by the government. Stonewall, an organisation that brooks no dissent from its own different and very dirigiste views, was livid. Finding no joy at home, six months ago it attempted to internationalise the dispute through the UN.

Reported to the UN

UK government to be reported to UN over strike law by TUC

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) says it is reporting the UK government to the United Nations watchdog on workers' rights over a new strikes law.

New rules on strikes will require some employees to work during industrial action - or face being sacked.

The TUC said the legislation fell short of international legal standards.

The government said the new rules "protect the lives and livelihoods of the general public" as well as access to public services.

That would be the UN we didn't elect. The same UN which for decades has been promoting futile and destructive climate policies. The UN currently failing to mitigate the effects of the war in Ukraine. The UN which never seems to escape or deal with fraud and abuse scandals.

Yet as the TUC effectively owns a major political party, it probably doesn't have much to worry about.

Woke Smoke

Thorsteinn Siglaugsson has an entertaining TCW piece on the creepy and absurd nature of the UN’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards.


Blessed are the cigarette makers in UN’s world of woke

ALL businesses will soon be required to follow the UN’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards. These are intended to measure the contribution of businesses to environmental and social issues, as well as whether their operations fulfil the requirement of equality for all minority groups, real or imaginary. In Europe, under the new EU Taxonomy, companies are forced to submit complex and detailed ‘sustainability’ reports. The requirements apply not only to the companies; they also have to ensure that their suppliers meet them. Initially, these reporting requirements will only apply to medium to larger firms, but it won’t be long before smaller businesses and even the self-employed will have to comply as well. As the ‘conspiracy theorists’ have it, our homes will be next.

Recently it was reported that Tesla, one of those at the forefront of the transition to green energy, scored only 37 out of 100 points in S&P Global’s assessment of its performance in the aforementioned categories. It seems to weigh heavily against the company that it is mostly controlled by white males, and its executives have not spent much time or resources supporting various activist groups, or selecting suppliers based on their location in developing countries rather than the quality of their products.

The whole piece is well worth reading, as a reminder of how creepy the UN is and how absurd. I have never smoked, but this contrast with Tesla was encouraging. Correlation is not causation perhaps, but the UK was less deranged when smoking was more widespread.

However, cigarette maker Philip Morris won’t have to worry about this. It scored 84 out of 100 in the latest assessment of its contribution to improving the world. This performance is not based on the company’s products, which are the main cause of untimely deaths in the United States and cut short more lives than alcohol, drugs, and traffic accidents combined. The carbon footprint of the industry is significant, and its overall negative environmental impact looms large. Tobacco farming is mostly carried out in developing countries, causing deforestation and erosion.

But none of this matters when it comes to the ‘positive impact on society, sustainability, and equality’ as measured by ESG standards. The company claims it ‘empowers’ female tobacco farmers, fights against ‘systemic racism’ (conveniently forgetting that black Americans are proportionally most affected by smoking-related diseases), and emphasises the importance of combating ‘microaggression’ and hiring from diverse backgrounds.

Clearing House (UK)

Health warning, it's the Grauniad


UK strikes laws must conform with international rules, says UN agency

The International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN agency, said the UK needed to “ensure that existing and prospective legislation is in conformity” with international rules on freedom of association, and added that the government must seek technical assistance from the agency’s experts.


A description I’ve remembered for decades came from a 1952 science fiction novel, The Space Merchants. Authors Frederik Pohl and Cyril M Kornbluth described government as a "clearing house for pressure groups". The phrase stayed with me because even outside Pohl and Kornbluth’s dystopia, government is just that.

As bureaucracies and pressure groups became larger, more powerful, and more global, the national government stage has been shrinking in proportion. It is already comparable to an amateur performance of Macbeth in the village hall. The national political actors we vote for have become significantly less relevant in only a few decades.

Take Matt Hancock for example. Thrust onto the national pandemic stage he became a lowly actor employed by Clearing House (UK), a nonentity always trying to learn a confusing script handed down from the global pandemic stage.

Or Jeremy Corbyn. As Prime Minister, would the dim ideologue have screwed up anything significant? Probably not. It is likely that Clearing House (UK) was mostly out of his reach already.

Clearing House (UK) conducts its negotiations behind closed doors. It does not require inexperienced poseurs to arbitrate between it and Clearing House (EU), Clearing House (UN) or its global subsidiaries such as the International Labour Organization.

An absurd thing to say

Turkey-Syria earthquake death toll expected to more than double, says UN aid chief

Mr Griffiths, the UN's emergency relief co-ordinator, said: "I think it is difficult to estimate precisely as we need to get under the rubble but I'm sure it will double or more.

"That's terrifying. This is nature striking back in a really harsh way."

What did the man think he was saying here? We are abusing nature and this is nature striking back at us? An absurd thing to say under any circumstances, but particularly so after such a dreadful catastrophe. 

Ploughing The Clouds

 

A recent charity shop find was a copy of Sir David Low’s political cartoons published between 1945 and 1953. The cartoons give an interesting flavour of the times. Each one has the publication date and a brief explanation of its subject. Text under the above cartoon reads –

12 February 1946

Failure of the monsoon had driven the food situation from bad to worse for the 500 million people in India and the East. Five to fifteen million Indians were threatened with death from starvation and conditions in Malaya were nearly as bad. The United Nations were made aware by urgent messages from the Director-General of UNRRA that food came before politics as the first and greatest problem of the Far East.

Today of course, monsoon failure would be blamed on the developed world via the climate change narrative. It's the kind of thing bureaucrats always do, but we know that now.

Keeping it in the family

Mercatornet has a piece on the UN career of Xi Jinping’s wife and her role in the Tiananmen Square massacre. 

Xi Jinping’s wife is a UN envoy for promoting ‘empowerment’ for women and girls.

Chinese are outraged at how badly poor and disabled women are being treated in their country

A Chinese woman called Peng Liyuan was appointed in 2014 as the UNESCO Special Envoy for the Advancement of Girls’ and Women’s Education, with the mandate of “supporting girls’ and women’s empowerment through quality education.” She has been quietly kept in this position until today.

When Peng visits countries on behalf of the UNESCO, she is often introduced as a “world-famous soprano and folk singer,” although as an artist she is unknown outside China. However, her talents as a singer are not the reason why she is a UNESCO Special Envoy. She is there because she is the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping. She had already been appointed by the World Health Organization “Goodwill Ambassador for Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS” with a press release calling her “a famous Chinese soprano and actress,” and hiding that she was the wife of Xi Jinping, then China’s Vice President.

Peng started “empowering women and girls” early enough. In 1989, the Chinese Army and State Security killed some 10,000 students in Tiananmen Square during the June Fourth Incident, including a good number of young women. Peng dressed in a military uniform went to celebrate and sing for the “victorious” troops in Tiananmen Square.

What a fine organisation the UN is. 

Drivel will do for the proles

'COVID is a warning that much worse lies in store': Alarm raised ahead of biggest climate report since 2013

Following a spate of deadly wildfires, floods and famine, IPCC researchers begin finalising the most comprehensive assessment of global warming of its kind since 2013...

"While the climate crisis, together with biodiversity loss and pollution, has indeed been under way for decades, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought this triple planetary crisis into sharp focus," Joyce Msuya, assistant secretary general of the United Nations and deputy executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.

"The pandemic is a warning from the planet that much worse lies in store unless we change our ways."

COVID-19 is a warning from the planet eh? Not a warning about meddling with viruses in China presumably. Definitely not that. 

We seem to have reached a stage where official propaganda doesn't even have to mean anything. As always, drivel will do for the proles.

Had to be the Guardian

Had to be the Guardian. The world knows the WHO to be incompetent, corrupt and in need of drastic reform. Nevertheless the dear old Guardian has to poke its feeble stick at the US President merely for firing a shot across its sacred global bows.