The liberal media and politicians have created many myths about the United Nations, which are taken for granted by the misinformed. The following list of common myths are addressed in detail on the Jewish Virtual Library web site.
- The United Nations plays a constructive role in Middle East affairs. Its record of fairness and balance makes it an ideal forum for settling the Arab-Israeli dispute.
- The Palestinians have been denied a voice at the UN.
- Israel enjoys the same rights as any other member of the United Nations.
- The United Nations and its affiliate institutions are critical of Israeli policies, but never attack Jews or engage in anti-Semitic rhetoric.
- The Arab states approved the 1991 repeal of the resolution libeling Zionism.
- Even if the General Assembly is biased, the Security Council has always been balanced in its treatment of the Middle East.
- The United States always supports Israel and vetoes critical resolutions.
- America's Arab allies routinely support U.S. positions at the UN.
- Israel's failure to implement UN resolutions is a violation of international law.
- The United Nations has demonstrated equal concern for the lives of Israelis and Palestinians.
Posted by Walt as Middle East at 9:31 AM EDT
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During his visit to the UN this week Chavez’ of Venezuela made many derogatory statements against the U.S. and President Bush. Finally, he made a statement many Americans can agree with: get the UN out of the US.
In a post on the Israel Blog:
Tucked into Hugo Chavez’ tirade accompanied by his ugly, insulting comments about President Bush, he put forward an excellent idea: move the United Nations to South America, or at least out of the USA. This is one suggestion I can fully endorse. It’s time for Hugo Chavez to mount a petition to remove the UN from US soil. I’d like to be the first American to sign it. Venezuela certainly would be a prime location for the UN since its leader thinks our President is a “devil.” Why would he or any other leader want to come to such a country? Or maybe the UN could relocate to one of the other “non-aligned” nations which recently met in Cuba re-aligning themselves to bash Bush before they all landed in New York this week. . .
Unfortunately, I do not think the UN would want to leave the US with all it perks, like free speech and the high standard of living. But we can only pray that they do leave.
Posted by Walt as Anti-US, News Briefs at 10:11 AM EDT
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Although this post was written in August 2002, the UN is still trying to get their hands on more of our money via taxes.
By Alan Caruba
www.anxietycenter.com
When I took the oath of duty for my service in the United States Army, I swore to uphold and protect the US Constitution. It was made clear to me that I was not to serve any foreign kings or potentates. My sole allegiance was to the United States of America.
One of these days, if the United Nations' potentates have their way, I am going to receive a tax bill that will include a portion of my earnings allocated to the UN. Their taxation powers will have been imposed as a new layer on top of those paid to the United States.
As it is, my tax dollars and yours already contribute to the dues paid by the US; a full 22% of the entire bill to maintain the UN, but not including the money we give to UNESCO, nor the millions to fund the many military missions we undertake for the UN, but for which we rarely, if ever, receive compensation.
In 2001, the US was voted off the UN Human Rights Commission, a seat it held from its beginning in 1948. It has lost its seat on the UN International Narcotics Board and now comes word that it may lose its leadership role with the UN World Food Program where we contributed $24 million last year, more than any other nation. The General Accounting Office is about to release a report that former President Clinton diverted $24 billion, meant for our military, for UN peacekeeping missions around the world from 1995 to 2001. The "official" amount we are said to have contributed is $3.45 billion.
The notion that this nation owes any dues to the UN is a fraud. Had I any choice, not one cent of my money would go to the upkeep of the UN.
For Americans and others around the world, if the UN's High Level Panel of Financing Development has its way, this global octopus will spread its tentacles of power to impose global taxes.
On the surface, the Panel's conference will be passed off as being about boosting foreign aid to needy Third World nations. They are needy because they are mostly run by despots who siphon off aid into their Swiss bank accounts or spend it on military hardware instead of roads and bridges, hospitals and schools.
They are needy because they oppress their own people and destroy their ability to create any kind of a middle class who might unite to demand freedom. In socialist regimes, they are provided with enough "free" services to keep them (in theory) content.
The treaties and protocols created by this "Development" conference will be added to the more than 175 that already directly affect the internal policies of the United States of America, its individual States, and your local government.
(1) They intend to create an International Tax Organization. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant. Every year, until he retired, he wrestled with an increasingly complex tax code issued by the Internal Revenue Service. I learned to keep receipts for everything from him. Can you imagine trying to deal with a United Nations tax code?
(2) They intend to levy global taxes and they have their eyes on those that would affect every single financial transaction (currency) and on all energy use. These taxes would most affect industrialized nations by redistributing the funds to those for whom capitalism is an anathema. It isn't taxation. It's theft.
(3) They are calling for something they call "tax harmonization." This would permit high-tax nations, Socialists, to require their system be imposed on all income earned in the United States. Thus, the welfare states of Europe and the corrupt Third World nations would bring all their economic woes to bear on the citizens of the US. Right now, the President is calling for lower taxes in order to stimulate our economy. Under the rules being proposed by the United Nations, this nation would not have their power.
(4) If someone from another nation moved to the United States, the UN conference will propose that their earnings be taxed to ensure the payment would be made to the nation they fled!
The conference will also call for the United States to increase its foreign aid to "the annual equivalent of 0.7 percent of industrialized countries' gross national product." This means our current level of foreign aid would rise from $12 billion annually to more than $70 billion!
None of the language of the proposals that will be put forth at the UN conference make any reference at all to lowering tax rates, a vital element for economic development, nor will it discuss controlling wasteful government spending.
This conference is about DESTROYING the economic strength of the United States and the restructuring of our economic system to resemble the welfare states of England, France, Germany and nations whose governments take up to 70% ore more of the earnings of their citizens. They then redistribute it into programs such as socialized medicine that simply do not work.
The conference is about controlling all multinational corporations, all international transactions, turning them into cash cows for the United Nations.
The United States has exactly one vote in the UN General Assembly. The vast number of the other 185 nations would be the primary beneficiaries of this scheme to deprive Americans of the right to determine what their tax codes will be and how their tax dollars are spent.
Most Americans have no idea they are barely a month away from this act of global government grand theft.
A treaty begins life officially when the UN General Assembly or a special conference adopts the final draft of a proposed treaty. This draft is then circulated to member nations for their "signatures." Delegates from the participating nations "sign" the document, thus indicating their nation's intent to "ratify" it. The signature does not bind the nation to the terms of the treaty, but it does obligate the nation to "take no action contrary to the treaty."
Americans are being duped into accepting restrictions that can do nothing more than increase the cost of the use of all forms of energy by this nation. If there isn't a massive outcry against the forthcoming UN "Development" conference, we will all end up paying taxes to the United Nations.
There is only one solution. The United States must withdraw from the United Nations or it will be subsumed into its plan to determine every aspect of life here and in every other nation of the world. We will end up paying for our own enslavement. There can be no halfway steps toward accommodation. Wendell Phillips said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." We are about to lose ours.
This commentary is sponsored by We The People Foundation. The Foundation maintains an Internet web site at http://www.givemeliberty.org/.
© 2001 Alan Caruba.
www.anxietycenter.com
Posted by Walt as Finances, UN Taxes at 8:37 PM EDT
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As a diversion from far more important matters such as the deepening quagmire for American forces in Iraq, the launch by North Korea of several missiles would be hard to beat. Calls for the UN to issue resolutions and impose sanctions against the communist regime will likely go nowhere because two of the five veto-possessing permanent Security Council member nations (China and Russia) have already indicated that they will not support such moves. It is worth recalling that China’s seat in the UN was awarded to anti-communist Free China at the UN’s inception. And the seat held today by Russia was awarded to the no-longer-existing USSR. Transferring these two seats to others is an example of the lawlessness that can always be expected from the UN. What isn’t being stated very clearly in this current “sideshow” is that whatever North Korea has in missile or other advanced military technology, it got from China to begin with. Expecting China to discipline its stepchild is ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than expecting the United Nations to be a force against any communist-led rogue nation. All of which adds up to one more reason why the honorable thing for America is to withdraw completely from the UN.
Posted by Walt as Corruption at 4:40 AM EDT
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An amendment to the 2007 foreign operations appropriation measure bars the UN’s potential to tax Americans directly (via a tax on airline tickets, oil imports, etc.). Introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (Rep. Texas), the amendment was added automatically this year after receiving overwhelming approval in the similar 2006 measure. The measure must still be approved in a senate-house conference, however. Its survival is expected.
Many other countries have been paying tax to the UN.
Posted by Walt as News Briefs, UN Taxes at 4:47 AM EDT
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In a 12-page report issued in late July, the UN’s new Human Rights agency called on the United States to abandon secret detention facilities in Europe and elsewhere, cease allowing capital punishment, and improve the treatment of poor and Black Americans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Ever the meddler in the domestic affairs of nations, the UN panel also urged the U.S. to change its policy regarding voting rights for residents of the District of Columbia. State Department official Matthew Waxman termed the report “disappointing.”
Posted by Walt as Anti-US, Freedom & Human Rights, News Briefs at 12:35 AM EDT
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In 1958, Louis B. Sohn authored (with Grenville Clark) a book entitled World Peace Through World Law. In it, the two men called for a permanent UN peace force as the world’s only military establishment, delivery of all nuclear weapons to the UN, making the UN Declaration of Human Rights a legally binding document for all of mankind, and UN control over all firearms including those possessed by civilians. Earlier, Sohn had assisted in the creation of the UN’s World Court and had a role in the drafting of the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea. Not surprisingly, he and Clark openly called for a UN-led world government.
In 1981, after more than 20 years on the faculty at Harvard Law School, Sohn accepted an invitation from fellow CFR member Dean Rusk, another internationalist who had served as secretary of state during the Kennedy-Johnson administrations, to teach at the University of Georgia. When Mr. Sohn passed away in June at the age of 92, he knew that most of his sovereignty-destroying proposals had not been enacted but were still being promoted by like-minded enemies of freedom. Efforts by members of The John Birch Society can be credited with thwarting what this man spent a lifetime trying to accomplish. Sad to say, there are others like him anxiously working for the same destructive goals. It would be well for all who treasure an independent United States to recall the warning given by the poet: “Not yet, O Freedom, close thy lids in slumber, for thine enemy never sleeps.”
Posted by Walt as General Commentary at 10:32 PM EDT
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The UN's spineless leader, Kofi Annan, has all of the sudden taken a soft stance on the Iranian nuclear issue and is back peddling in Ahmadinejad's court.
Kofi Annan, sporting his pacifist/humanist goggles, declared from Tehran Sunday that the Iranian nuclear crisis could be easily solved in a diplomatic manner if the West would just show a little patience.
The lack of Western patience, not Iranian defiance, is the problem. Right. How in the world is sitting around twiddling our thumbs going to suddenly cause the Iranians to realize they don’t want nuclear weapons? (Zionist.com)
It is very obvious who side the UN is on. It is certainly not the side of western freedom. The UN will not even stand up to the interests of the Western world.
Posted by Walt as Middle East, Terrorism at 9:12 AM EDT
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The only American soldier ever arrested, tried and convicted for refusing to deploy under United Nations control has been rejected on appeal by the US Court of Appeals (Case #05-5023).
District of Columbia (PRWEB) August 30, 2006 — The American soldier who refused to wear a United Nations blue beret lost another round last week in his attempt to petition for a redress of grievances, US Court of Appeals (Case #05-5023).
In a tersely worded note, the Court of Appeals made it clear than not one of the eleven justices was interested in the merits of the case before them. Not one could discover a Constitutional issue that has been violated in New's eleven year legal odyssey to have his case heard on its own merits. (Wording below.)
The issue before this court was actually unrelated to New's stand in 1995, when he refused to report to a formation in Germany, where his battle dress uniform (BDU) was to have been altered to replace the US flag on the right shoulder with a United Nations patch. This court was asked to examine the radical "Standard of Review" which a three-judge panel used earlier this year to reject New's appeal.
As has happened several times in New's case, he is now carrying a torch for an issue that is secondary to his initial issue, but has been forced upon him by several astonishing rulings by courts which cannot find their way to examine the merits of his case. The latest ruling by the Court of Appeals overturned 40 years of precedent by this very court.
The initial court-martial in 2006 refused to allow SPC New to present any evidence in his own defense, which would have proved that the uniform changes were unauthorized; the chain of command under a U.N. general were unconstitutional; and the deployment into Macedonia was, in fact, illegal. The military courts of appeal ruled, in order to prevent New's evidence from being submitted, that Evidence is not a fundamental element of the Defense. JAG officers throughout the military were stunned at that ruling.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as War & Peace at 8:12 AM EDT
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What about Hezbollah's anti-personal rockets that were fired on Israeli citizens?
The UN's Human Rights Council recently voted to investigate allegations of "systematic targeting and killings of civilians" by Israel in their recent war with Hezbollah terrorists. Most of the nations voting for the investigation were Muslin Nations and Russia. Most of the western nations voted no to the investigation. The United States is no longer a member of the Human Rights Council.
What about the Hezbollah rockets with anti-personal flack that were fired indiscriminately into civilian population centers? You can see for yourself an excellent power point presentation on TampaBayOnline.org. There are close up pictures of the Hezbollah rockets damage, including the perforation of cars and walls with the evidence of thousand of ball bearing shrapnel.
Twenty-seven states on the council — including Russia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — voted on Aug. 11 in favour of the probe, which was proposed last month by the countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Arab League.
Canada joined the United Kingdom, Germany and nine other countries in voting against the call for the probe, while eight nations abstained.
Itzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, called the convening of the special session "one-sided" and reiterated his criticism from last month, when he said it was "painful" that the council has made a distinction between suffering and deaths occurring in different countries. (CBC.ca)
The UN's Human Rights Council is either blind or enabling the destruction of Israel by their Muslim enemies.
Posted by Walt as Freedom & Human Rights, Middle East, War & Peace at 8:11 AM EDT
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