On Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, moderator David Gregory touted the United Nations slamming the "human rights record" of the U.S. as it condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine: "You know, when we deal with Vladimir Putin, this issue of hypocrisy comes up....The United Nations pointedly criticized the U.S.'s human rights record over drone strikes, NSA surveillance, the death penalty." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Turning to Democratic Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and Republican Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, Gregory worried: "Does it make it hard to deal with the likes of Putin and Lavrov when you've got the U.N. criticizing the U.S. that way?"
United Nations
By Kyle Drennen | March 17, 2014 | 12:28 PM EDT
U.S. ‘Transitioning’ Domain Name Functions to ‘Global Community’; Politico Takes Eight Paragraphs to Name Likely Candidate
By Tom Blumer | March 14, 2014 | 8:12 PM EDT In a late Friday afternoon release, the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intent "to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community." The statement is full of the kind of dense bureaucratic language one tends to see when the agency is doing something really important but controversial.
Stating the situation more clearly, TheDomains.com calls it "the Offical Statement Of The US Giving Up Control Over ICANN" (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Americans for Limited Government has issued a press release "blasting the Obama Commerce Department for turning over control of the Internet to United Nations International Telecommunication Union." The one story in the press as of 7:30 p.m. was at the Politico, whose Erin Mershon appears to have caught wind of the news ahead of NTIA's release. Mershon takes eight paragraphs to tell readers to whom the functions are to be transitioned — and I don't think her dallying is mere sloppiness (bolds are mine):
By Ken Shepherd | February 11, 2014 | 4:22 PM EST
The liberal media have made much of a recent United Nations committee report insisting that the Vatican needs to ditch centuries of orthodox Christian doctrine as part of its effort to combat child sex abuse.
But as Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies noted yesterday in an op-ed published February 10 in the Wall Street Journal, the UN has been curiously quiet about real abuses of children borne about by authoritarian regimes like the Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea. You can read the full piece here. Here's a taste (emphasis mine):
By Matthew Balan | February 5, 2014 | 3:23 PM EST
Wednesday's Good Morning America on ABC ballyhooed the "breaking news" that Pope Francis shook hands with the real-life inspiration for the anti-Catholic movie "Philiomena" at the Vatican. George Stephanopoulos trumpeted the "moving journey for the woman portrayed by Judi Dench in the Oscar-nominated film" and her "remarkable story."
Cynthia McFadden slantingly gushed that "a woman, once shamed by the Catholic Church for having a baby out of wedlock, was invited today to meet Pope Francis," and mouthed the caption of Rolling Stone's recent cover featuring the pontiff: "The times – they are a-changin'." McFadden did her best to boost the movie and failed to mention conservative objections to the production. She also went out of her way to spotlight the United Nations' ideologically-tinged attack on the Church: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
As IPCC Report Looms, AP Frames 'Scientific Consensus': 'Humans Are Cooking the Planet by Burning Coal, Oil and Natural Gas'
By Tom Blumer | September 24, 2013 | 5:01 PM EDT It's amusing to see how the left reacts when things don't work out as predicted. Earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted how USA Today's Kelly Kennedy described a major malfunction in Obamacare which will cause hundreds of thousands of children to go without health insurance next year as a "glitch."
On the "climate change" front, those darned "glitches" abound. In an item today about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Karl Ritter at the Associated Press attempted to report on how the IPCC plans to address the fact that there hasn't been any global warming, human-caused or otherwise, since the late 1990s. A hilarious headline spewed forth, followed by eruptions of ridiculous and hysterical words (HT James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web; bolds and numbered tags are mine throughout this post):
By Kyle Drennen | December 6, 2012 | 11:10 AM EST
Employing sanctimonious rhetoric to paint Senate Republicans as cruel and heartless for opposing a U.N. treaty on disabled rights completely redundant to the Americans With Disabilities Act, on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams lectured: "If you want to know how broken, how partisan our Congress and our government has become, all you need to look at is this one day in Washington....Senator John Kerry called this one of the saddest days he's seen in close to three decades in the U.S. Senate." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
In the report that followed, correspondent Kelly O'Donnell pointed to the GOP as the source of the sorrow: "For those looking for cooperation tonight, only disappointment, even real sadness over what happened with this treaty intended to help the disabled....Five Republican votes short of the 66 needed....it's unusual to see tears shed in the Senate chamber, I witnessed that today....I saw a woman in a wheelchair, leaving with tears rolling down her face."
By Tom Blumer | December 1, 2012 | 4:00 PM EST
In case you missed it, there's yet another United Nations climate conference in progress, this time in Doha Qatar. At the Associated Press, there is a story on a protest which organizers want to characterize as a "march for peace" by "a few hundred" climate activists demanding "climate justice." The AP's Karl Ritter warns readers that "Dangerous (global) warming effects could include flooding of coastal cities and island nations, disruptions to agriculture and drinking water, and the spread of diseases and the extinction of species" -- even though there has been no net warming in 16 years. Another AP story suggest that "SOME WISH ISLAM WOULD INFORM CLIMATE DEBATE." I'll suggest that the referenced "some" includes a few AP and other journalists and almost no one else.
But there has been no room at the AP, as confirmed in a search on the world "climate" at the wire service's website at 3:30 p.m. ET and a review of possibly relevant articles, for discussion or even recognition of a November 29 open letter sent by over 125 scientists "qualified in climate-related matters" who have informed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that "there is no substantiation" for the so-called "science" undergirding the meeting's agenda (produced in full after the jump; bold is in original):
By Kyle Drennen | September 26, 2012 | 5:21 PM EDT
At the top of Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams framed President Obama's address to the United Nations as him getting tough on Iranian nuclear ambitions: "Drawing the line. The President today with a strong new warning to Iran, plus what he had to say about the recent violence against Americans."
In the report that followed, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd touted that Obama "appeared to draw a real line in the sand on Iran's effort to build nuclear weapons." Todd then sneered that "the President's strong words weren't enough to satisfy Mitt Romney."
By Matt Hadro | September 25, 2012 | 6:14 PM EDT
CNN's Gloria Borger provided the Obama campaign spin on Tuesday afternoon, excusing the President's choice to not meet privately with any foreign leaders at this week's UN General Assembly. This despite the previous two presidents having met with world leaders at the UN during a campaign year.
"This is kind of a 'don't rock the boat' strategy. I think there's a sense that no good can come of any controversy right now," Borger explained the President's decision. However, even anchor Wolf Blitzer called it "probably a missed opportunity" for Obama, and reporter John King said even some Democrats questioned it.
By Paul Wilson | June 22, 2012 | 1:27 PM EDT
Environmentalist groups have adopted the language of the failed Occupy movement in order to complain about UN inaction over what they say is an impending environmental catastrophe. Protesters even went so far as to tear up the approved text in a special ceremony.
The Vatican blocked language in the UN preliminary text for the Rio+20 environmental summit, titled “The Future We Want,” which called for universal access to “reproductive health services.” The deleted language (in bold) read: "We emphasize that sustainable development must be inclusive and people-centered, benefiting and involving all people, including youth and children. We recognize that gender equality and women’s empowerment [, including through access to reproductive health services – US; G77, Holy See delete] are important for sustainable development and our common future."
Leading Language Indicator? Three Earth Summit-Related AP Reports Don't Mention 'Climate' or 'Warming'
By Tom Blumer | June 18, 2012 | 1:08 AM EDT It may be a fluke, but it seems too coincidental. What it may be is a leading indicator that the establishment press and international advocates of global wealth redistribution have figured out that "global warming" and "climate change," its deceptive substitute term, have lost their luster thanks to a lack of scientific rigor, scandals, and deception.
What I'm referring to is the fact that in reviewing three Associated Press items which would appear to have been opportunities to bring up the topic of "warming" and "climate" in connection with the U.N.'s latest "earth summit," none of them contained either word. It seems that "sustainable development," a term which has been around for a while and which basically means "stopping most development regardless of merit," is now the go-to term when one wishes to avoid the aforementioned W-word or C-word.
By NB Staff | December 21, 2011 | 4:30 PM EST
During the "Grapevine" segment on Tuesday's Special Report on Fox News, anchor Bret Baier played a clip of a UNICEF ad depicting Santa Claus as an uncaring Scrooge and quoted an item from NewsBusters' senior editor Tim Graham: "Conservative site NewsBusters asked quote: 'Why on Earth would jolly old Saint Nicholas resent aid for the poor? Is this just another way the UN bureaucracy asserts its own moral superiority?'" [View video after the jump / audio available here]