Archive for the ‘UN’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

“The enemy of my enemy …” makes for strange bedfellows in Syria as AL-Qaeda joins with the US

February 12, 2012

Al-Qaeda has come out in strong support of the Syrian opposition and becomes a strange bedfellow for the US and Western European nations who have aligned themselves more against President Assad than for anybody in particular.

Just how the US and France and UK and others will now be reconciled with Al-Qaeda jumping into bed with them remains to be seen. But it seems that Al-Qaeda has been fostering the rebellion in Syria for well over a year. Perhaps they have always been in that Syrian bed and have only recently been joined by the others?

Last week the Russians and Chinese exercised their vetoes in the UN to stop a resolution against the Syrian regime and which called for President Assad to step down. Initially I felt that the Russians and Chinese had balked at the idea of supporting any resolution supporting regime-change since this could someday be turned against them. They claimed that their vetoes were primarily because the resolution was unbalanced since it did not condemn opposition groups for the use of violence and for causing some of the bloodshed. Now with the Al-Qaeda support for the opposition “giving” them the right to use whatever means they saw fit to get rid of a “cancerous regime”, it begins to look as if the picture in Syria is not as one-sided as it has appeared.

(more…)

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Politics, Syria, UN | Comments Off on “The enemy of my enemy …” makes for strange bedfellows in Syria as AL-Qaeda joins with the US

Climategate 2.0: What’s in the encrypted 200,000 emails?

December 6, 2011

While I have been travelling over the last week, the IPCC Durban circus has been performing to dwindling audiences.

The Climategate 1 and 2 emails that have been released so far (about 1,000 + 5,000) are focused mainly on a 3-way nexus between a group of rather mediocre scientists, a few willing (and gullible) reporters and some of the bureaucrats/politicians who have seized on the advantages of fear-mongering.

The mediocrity of the so-called climate scientists is palpable. Michael Mann leaves out data whwnever he feels like it, Phil Jones can’t fathom the intricacies of an Excel table,  Tom Wigley (appropriate name) tries to get the PhD’s of his opponents retracted, etc …….. . And all for “The Cause”.

We have seen the blatant lobbying activities of Harrabin and Revkin undermine the reputation of the BBC and the New York Times. At least George Monbiot does not pretend to be anything other than a lobbyist. Harrabin’s pompous defence of his blinkered view is particularly nauseating.

Now we find that the IPCC itself was not averse to falsifying data when it felt the message needed strengthening.

The Global warming fraternity have been busy defending themselves, denying that what they have been engaged in has been bad science or bad journalism. But the politicians and bureaucrats have escaped scrutiny — at least so far.

But there are 200,000 further emails waiting to be un-encrypted by the release of a decrypting phrase  (the emails themselves have already been released). And some bureaucrats, some IPCC functionaries, some carbon trading entrepreneurs  and some amoral, fear-mongering politicians have to wait their turn.

But they will probably not have to wait very long!!!!

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Academic misconduct, Alarmism, Climate, Corruption, Media, Politics, UN | Comments Off on Climategate 2.0: What’s in the encrypted 200,000 emails?

One year on, cheap but untested vaccines to be deployed against cholera in Haiti

October 25, 2011

The UN introduced cholera to Haiti and is now embarking on a vaccination program with a vaccine which has been hurriedly approved just in September this year.

Last October the claims that the UN had introduced the disease into Haiti were initially denied but in May this year the United Nations released a long-awaited report indicating that human waste from Nepalese peacekeepers along with dirty drinking water likely triggered the spread of the cholera epidemic that has gripped Haiti since October 2010.

As of last week the cholera outbreak in Haiti has caused 473,649 cases 251,885 hospitalizations and 6,631 deaths. The number of deaths is thought to be an underestimate.

(more…)

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Medicine, Natural Disasters, UN | 2 Comments »

Carbon trading greed drives land grab and eviction of 20,000 in Uganda

October 4, 2011

I take man-made carbon dioxide (3 – 4% of an atmospheric concentration of 0.04%) as being quite insignificant and essentially irrelevant for climate change.

But global warming ideology has led to the opportunistic development of the carbon trading  obscenity which funnels vast amounts of tax money into the sticky hands of a few developers and their parasitic politicians and bureaucrats. The UN (Kyoto protocol) and the EU (carbon trading) programs are particularly to blame. The frauds and scams connected with carbon trading do nothing for our climate but they encourage the greed which leads to the most obscene and despicable behaviour. I posted recently about the excesses in Honduras which led to the murder of 23 farmers. But I had missed this story which came out in the New York Times two weeks ago. 20,000 Ugandans have been evicted, houses burned and people killed to allow a UK company to plant forests and earn millions in selling the resulting carbon credits:

In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out 

KICUCULA, Uganda — According to the company’s proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a “peaceful” and “voluntary” manner. People here remember it quite differently. “I heard people being beaten, so I ran outside,” said Emmanuel Cyicyima, 33. “The houses were being burnt down.” Other villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers. “They said if we hesitated they would shoot us,” said William Bakeshisha, adding that he hid in his coffee plantation, watching his house burn down. “Smoke and fire.”

According to a report released by the aid group Oxfam on Wednesday, more than 20,000 people say they were evicted from their homes here in recent years to make way for a tree plantation run by a British forestry company, emblematic of a global scramble for arable land.

“Too many investments have resulted in dispossession, deception, violation of human rights and destruction of livelihoods,” Oxfam said in the report. “This interest in land is not something that will pass.” As population and urbanization soar, it added, “whatever land there is will surely be prized.”

Across Africa, some of the world’s poorest people have been thrown off land to make way for foreign investors, often uprooting local farmers so that food can be grown on a commercial scale and shipped to richer countries overseas.

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.

The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations. The company involved, New Forests Company, grows forests in African countries with the purpose of selling credits from the carbon-dioxide its trees soak up to polluters abroad. Its investors include the World Bank, through its private investment arm, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC.

Read article 

That the New Forest Company is opportunistic and greedy is inevitable and understandable when the benefits of the carbon trading programs were flouted under their noses. That they were unaware of the methods used is not credible. The results of the carbon trading scams are becoming sick and despicable and the EU politicians and bureaucrats who administer such schemes cannot continue to hide behind their misplaced intentions to “save the globe” and their “rules”.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Climate, European Union, Fraud, UN | Comments Off on Carbon trading greed drives land grab and eviction of 20,000 in Uganda

UN is only as good as its worst member: Uruguay troops misbehave in Haiti

September 5, 2011

As if Haiti hadn’t enough problems.

The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was established in 2004 and was given a new mandate to help maintain order and security following last year’s devastating earthquake. Earlier this year the UN mission was heavily criticised in the handling of the cholera outbreak which killed some 6,000 people. To make it worse it seems that the cholera was introduced into Haiti by peacekeeping troops from Nepal (where cholera is endemic).

Related: Whole-Genome Study Nails Haiti-Nepal Cholera Link

Now the UN and the Haitians have been let down badly by part of the contingent from Uruguay.

AFP: 

MONTEVIDEO — Uruguay announced it has sacked a navy commander with the UN mission in Haiti after a video was circulated of an alleged sexual assault on a young Haitian man by members of a Uruguayan peacekeeping unit.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement that in addition to the dismissal of the official — who was not immediately named — a military justice board had been convened and paperwork for the return home of the five allegedly involved had been started.

“The navy wants to go beyond the simple fact of the video (to determine) if there are other violations of conduct,” spokesman Sergio Bique told local media. The suspects will be tried and sentenced appropriately, he stressed.

In Haiti, Magistrate Paul Tarte said Friday that officials were examining testimony from the alleged suspect and images of the incident taken by a cell telephone camera at the base in southern Haiti, which have also been circulated on the Internet. Medical evidence of the attack also was obtained.

UN peacekeeping spokesman Kieran Dwyer said the United Nations acted immediately after hearing about the incident late last week.

The UN is an easy target for criticism and is often castigated from all sides of the political divide (and I am just as guilty in indulging in some of the criticism). But of course the UN is only as good as its worst member and it is the Lowest Common Factor which applies.

UN in Haiti (MINUSTAH): Current strength (31 July 2011)

  • 12,252 total uniformed personnel
    • 8,728 troops
    • 3,524 police
  • 564 international civilian personnel
  • 1,338 local civilian staff
  • 221 United Nations Volunteers

Country contributors

Military personnel – Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Japan, Jordan, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Phillipines, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, United States and Uruguay.

Police personnel – Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Grenada, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Madagascar, Mali, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Turkey, United States, Uruguay and Yemen.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics, UN | 3 Comments »

Now IPCC becomes just a lobby for Greenpeace!

June 16, 2011

There seems to be an incestuous relationship between the IPCC and a number of advocacy groups with the parties lobbying for each other. In the latest episode the IPCC has become the vehicle for publishing conclusions from a Greenpeace advocacy report on renewables:

The Independent:

Climate change panel in hot water again over ‘biased’ energy report 

The world’s foremost authority on climate change used a Greenpeace campaigner to help write one of its key reports, which critics say made misleading claims about renewable energy, The Independent has learnt. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up by the UN in 1988 to advise governments on the science behind global warming, issued a report last month suggesting renewable sources could provide 77 per cent of the world’s energy supply by 2050. But in supporting documents released this week, it emerged that the claim was based on a real-terms decline in worldwide energy consumption over the next 40 years – and that the lead author of the section concerned was an employee of Greenpeace. Not only that, but the modelling scenario used was the most optimistic of the 164 investigated by the IPCC.

Critics said the decision to highlight the 77 per cent figure showed a bias within the IPCC against promoting potentially carbon-neutral energies such as nuclear fuel. One climate change sceptic said it showed the body was not truly independent and relied too heavily on green groups for its evidence. 

Yesterday, after the full report was released, the sceptical climate change blog Climate Audit reported that the 77 per cent figure had been derived from a joint study by Sven Teske, a climate change expert employed by Greenpeace, which opposes the use of nuclear power to cut carbon emissions.

Last night, the IPCC said it had been made clear that the 77 per cent figure was only one of the estimates made from the models and that Mr Teske was just one of 120 researchers who had worked on the report. John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “Exxon, Chevron and the French nuclear operator EDF also contribute to the IPCC, so to paint this expert UN body as a wing of Greenpeace is preposterous.” But Mark Lynas, a climate change writer in favour of using nuclear and renewables to combat global warming, said: “It is stretching credibility for the IPCC to suggest that a richer world with two billion more people will use less energy in 2050. Campaigners should not be employed as lead authors in IPCC reports.”

The IPCC must urgently review its policies for hiring lead authors – and I would have thought that not only should biased ‘grey literature’ be rejected, but campaigners from NGOs should not be allowed to join the lead author group and thereby review their own work. There is even a commercial conflict of interest here given that the renewables industry stands to be the main beneficiary of any change in government policies based on the IPCC report’s conclusions. Had it been an oil industry intervention which led the IPCC to a particular conclusion, Greenpeace et al would have course have been screaming blue murder.

Climate Audit: IPCC WG3 and the Greenpeace Karaoke

The basis for this claim is a Greenpeace scenario. The Lead Author of the IPCC assessment of the Greenpeace scenario was the same Greenpeace employee who had prepared the Greenpeace scenarios, the introduction to which was written by IPCC chair Pachauri.

The public and policy-makers are starving for independent and authoritative analysis of precisely how much weight can be placed on renewables in the energy future. It expects more from IPCC WG3 than a karaoke version of Greenpeace scenario.

It is totally unacceptable that IPCC should have had a Greenpeace employee as a Lead Author of the critical Chapter 10, that the Greenpeace employee, as an IPCC Lead Author, should (like Michael Mann and Keith Briffa in comparable situations) have been responsible for assessing his own work and that, with such inadequate and non-independent ‘due diligence’, IPCC should have featured the Greenpeace scenario in its press release on renewables.

Everyone in IPCC WG3 should be terminated and, if the institution is to continue, it should be re-structured from scratch.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Corruption, UN | 1 Comment »

Gaddafi bombs Misrata while France tries to hurry into military action

March 18, 2011

From Swedish television:

France could  launch a military action against Libya within hours after the UN had authorized operation said French government spokesman Francois Baroin today, Friday. “The attack will come quickly,” he told radio station RTL.

Meanwhile Reuters reports that Gaddafi’s forces are bombing Misrata.

Norway will participate in any international military action against Muammar Kadaffi in Libya, said Defense Minister Grete Faremo to VG online. “We will contribute to the operation. But it is too early to say exactly in what way”. One possibility is that Norway will send F-16 fighters. “But we will also be launching a major humanitarian operation with transport aircraft”.

China said on Friday that it was concerned about the UN resolution to impose a flight ban over Libya, although the country chose not to use its veto to block it. “We oppose the use of military force in international relationships, and have serious reservations about elements of the resolution, “said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu.

Ten countries late on Thursday voted for the resolution while Russia, China, Germany, Brazil and India abstained. The resolution calls for  “all necessary measures” to protect civilians against Gadaffi, but no foreign soldiers will be sent to Libya.

Opinion is divided on how soon the United States military mobilization can begin. French diplomats said that along with Britain they could have a military response force ready on Friday, writes Reuters. But representatives of the military in Washington are hesitant. The senior general in the United States, Norton Schwartz, said on Thursday that it may take up to one week until the operation is in progress.

 

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in France, Libya, UN | Comments Off on Gaddafi bombs Misrata while France tries to hurry into military action

Proof that at the UN diplomats often do not think

February 13, 2011
Indian Minister of External Affairs S.M. Krish...

Image via Wikipedia

When making his speech at the UN Security Council, the Indian External Affairs minister S. M. Krishna started by reading the speech of the Portuguese Foreign Minister instead of his own. It took three whole minutes before another member of the Indian delegation stopped him and asked him to start again!!

One wonders how long the Minister would have continued before realising it was not his own speech. One wonders also if his colleagues were sleeping if it took them 3 minutes to realise what was happening. Of course UN speeches are so full of platitudes and phrases “signifying nothing” that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish one speech from another.

Another confirmation of my belief that the UN is not a place given to thought but serves only for reading out prepared positions by rote (prepared by others of course). Neither politicians / ministers, diplomats or their speech writers come out with much credit.

India Today has the story:

While delivering his speech at the UNSC, Krishna read out portions of the Portuguese foreign minister’s speech instead.

The occasion was significant as it was the Indian foreign minister’s first speech at the UNSC after New Delhi entered the coveted body on January 1 as a non-permanent member after nearly two decades.

Krishna was scheduled to speak after his Portuguese counterpart Luis Amado at a session on Friday on ‘Maintenance of International Peace and Security: Interdependence between Security and Development’. Portugal has also been elected to the UNSC for a two- year period.

As soon as the minister started speaking, almost everyone present realised that he was reading from Amado’s speech, as a few lines were out of place. Krishna apparently did not realise his mistake and went on.

“On a more personal note, allow me to express my profound satisfaction regarding the happy coincidence of having two members of the Portuguese Speaking Countries, Brazil and Portugal, together here today,” the minister said as a horrified Indian contingent watched. “The European Union is also responding in this manner in coordination with the United Nations.”

It was after three minutes that India’s permanent representative to the UN, Hardeep Puri, intervened and asked him to start afresh.

Clearly embarrassed, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) on Saturday tried to play down the minister’s gaffe.

It insisted that the “mistake” was not so crucial because the initial paragraph of all formal addresses contains ” certain salutations and courteous references and he had used such expressions from the address of the previous speaker”. Sources in the MEA said it was a “genuine” mistake. Amado had delivered an extempore speech and its written summary was distributed to all other 14 ministers of the UNSC members and five invitee ministers.

Krishna spoke immediately after Amado and he mixed the text of his own speech with the summary of what the Portugese minister had said. The copy of Amado’s speech in a folder did not bear either his name or the name of his country. Hence, the ” honest and inadvertent mistake”, a source said.

A former foreign minister, who did not wish to be named, put the blame on the Indian diplomats and ministerial staff present. “They should have alerted the minister within a few seconds. It was their responsibility to ensure that he had the correct speech before he began,” he said. Apart from Puri, other Indian diplomats present included MEA additional secretary (international organisations) Dilip Sinha and adviser to the minister Raghavendra Shastry. All of them were sitting right behind Krishna.


Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, India, UN | Comments Off on Proof that at the UN diplomats often do not think

UN to “investigate” its introduction of cholera to Haiti

December 17, 2010

More than a month after the outbreak , the United Nations secretary-general plans to call for an independent commission to study whether U.N. peacekeepers caused a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2,400 people in Haiti, an official said on Wednesday.

http://www.thehindu.com/health/policy-and-issues/article956037.ece?homepage=true

U.N. officials initially dismissed speculation about the involvement of peacekeepers. The announcement indicates that concern about the epidemic’s origin has now reached the highest levels of the global organization.

“We are urging and we are calling for what we could call an international panel,” U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said at a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York. “We are in discussions with (the U.N. World Health Organization) to find the best experts to be in a panel to be completely independent.”

Le Roy said details about the commission would be announced Friday by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He said cholera experts and other scientists will have full access to U.N. data and the suspected military base.

“They will make their report to make sure the truth will be known,” Le Roy said.

Soon after the cholera outbreak became evident in October, Haitians began questioning whether it started at a U.N. base in Meille, outside the central plateau town of Mirebalais and upriver from where hundreds were falling ill. Speculation pointed to recently arrived peacekeepers from Nepal, a South Asia nation where cholera is endemic.

U.N. officials rejected any idea the base was involved, saying its sanitation was air-tight.

WHO and the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said at the time that it was unlikely the origin would ever be known, and that pinning it down was not a priority.

Then the Associated Press found not only sanitation problems at the base, but that the U.N. mission was quietly taking samples from behind the post to test for cholera.

When the CDC determined the strain in Haiti matched one in South Asia, cholera and global health experts said there was now enough circumstantial evidence implicating the likely unwitting Nepalese soldiers to warrant an aggressive investigation.

The experts have also said there are important scientific reasons to trace the origin of the outbreak, including learning how the disease spreads, how it can best be combated and what danger countries around Haiti could face in the coming months and years.

Many think the U.N. mission’s reticence to seriously address the allegations in public helped fuel anti-peacekeeper riots that broke out across the country last month.

This outbreak, which experts estimate could affect more than 600,000 people in impoverished Haiti, involves the first confirmed cases of cholera in Haiti since WHO records began in the mid-20th century. Suspected outbreaks of a different strain of cholera might have occurred in Haiti more than a century ago.

The current outbreak has spread to the neighbouring Dominican Republic and isolated cases have been found in the United States.

French epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux argues that “no other hypothesis” from the Nepalese being the origin could explain his findings that cases of the diarrheal disease first appeared near the U.N. base in Haiti’s rural centre, far from shipping ports and the area affected by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Environment, Medicine, Natural Disasters, UN | Comments Off on UN to “investigate” its introduction of cholera to Haiti

Cancun won’t because it can’t

December 5, 2010

The  Cancun jamboree enters it’s second week with efforts being made to reduce expectations even further.  It is clear that any extension of Kyoto will be deferred till next year – again- and the pressure is now to get sufficient at Cancun next week to be able pronounce a success.

But the mood of the world has changed. Politicians lag the world by a few months and it is apparent that there are vry few who are leaders.

From the Hindu:

With Japan’s forthright statement on Monday and reluctance on the part of the other countries such as Russia, Canada and Australia to commit to a second phase, the entire negotiation is fraught with uncertainty.

To add to this the ALBA or the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, which comprise nations of the South America and the Caribbean, has upped the ante by demanding a firm commitment from developed nations to the second phase of the Kyoto protocol, putting pressure on the main polluters. Matters were worsened by rumours of a secret text floated at the conference, which was strenuously denied by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), on Thursday. The secret text, according to a statement released by NGOs says the presidency of the conference of parties, Mexico, has convened an exclusive small group of countries aimed at agreeing on a text on the most sensitive topic, the mitigation efforts of developed and developing countries.

Ms. Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), briefing the press, denied there was any secret Mexican text. Japan was clear about its position for a long time and it comes as no surprise that it had made a statement on its position, she reiterated. “The challenge of Cancun is how to formulate the broad array of proposals from developed countries under the UNFCCC framework,” she said. Even the position of the ALBA countries was known and there was no news there. Their position was 180 degrees opposite to Japan. “I don’t think it will be possible to guarantee a second commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. And it could be addressed later, but not at Cancun,” she said.

Expectations are being walked back.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Environment, UN | Comments Off on Cancun won’t because it can’t

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »