Libya joins UN Security Council
Libya — a former pariah state condemned by the U.S. as a sponsor of terrorism — won a seat on the United Nations Security Council Tuesday without opposition from the Bush administration…
Associated Press story at CBC News (dated October 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/GI)
Bush U.N. ambassador says he's 'caving' on world court: Bolton sees blocking of death sentence for Mexican rapist-murderer 'ridiculous'
Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton says the Bush administration is caving in to global opinion by siding with Mexico and the International Court of Justice in their attempt to overturn the death penalty of an illegal alien convicted of raping and murdering two teenage girls…
From WorldNetDaily (dated October 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (US/GI/MO)
UK 'should give up UN seat'
The United Kingdom should lose its independent voice at the United Nations and hand over its seat on the Security Council to the EU, according to the new Foreign Office Minister, Lord Malloch-Brown [in previous comments]… William Hague, the Conservative foreign affairs spokesman, said it was "alarming" that [Prime Minister] Brown had chosen to put in charge of UN reform "the man who thinks we should give up our UN Security Council seat to the EU." Downing Street said there was "no question of Britain giving up its seat"…
From The Telegraph (London) (dated August 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR/EU/GI)
George W. Bush, Globalist
President Bush is about to take his country by the hand and make a great leap forward into world government. He has signed on to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which transfers jurisdiction over the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans and all the oil and mineral resources they contain, to an International Seabed Authority. This second United Nations would be ceded eternal hegemony over two-thirds of the Earth. It is the greatest U.N. power grab in history and, thanks to George Bush, is about to succeed…The sea treaty grants us no rights we do not already have in international law and tradition -- it only codifies them. It siphons off national rights, national sovereignty and national wealth, however, and empowers global bureaucrats and Third World kleptocrats whose common trait is jealousy of and hostility toward the United States. Under LOST, if the United States wishes to mine the ocean or scoop up minerals from its floor, we would have to pay a fee and get permission from the Authority, then provide a subsidiary of the Authority called the Enterprise with a comparable site for its own exploitation with our technology. Eventually, the Authority would collect 7 percent of the revenue from the U.S. mining site, giving this institution of world government what the United Nations has hungered for for decades: the power to tax nations… U.S. warships today inspect vessels suspected of carrying nuclear contraband. In the Cold War, U.S. submarines entered harbors to tap into communications cables to protect our national security. Our subs routinely transit straits submerged. To do this, post-LOST, the Navy would have to get permission from an Authority composed of states most of which have an almost unbroken record of voting against us in the United Nations…
From columnist Patrick Buchanan at RealClearPolitics (dated October 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (US/GI)
U.S. LOST at sea?
It is inconceivable to this naval officer why the Senate would willingly want to forfeit its responsibility for America"s freedom of the seas to the unelected and unaccountable international agency that would be created by ratification of LOST [Law of the Sea Treaty]. The power of the U.S. Navy, not some anonymous bureaucracy, has been this nation's guarantee of our access to and freedom of the seas. I can site many maritime operations — from our blockade of Cuba in 1962, to the reflagging of ships in the Persian Gulf, to our submarine intelligence-gathering programs — that have been critical to maintaining our freedom of the seas and protecting our waters from encroachment. All those examples would likely have to be submitted to an international tribunal for approval if we become a signatory to this treaty. In a word, this is incomprehensible…The Treaty will impose a "globe-tax" to finance a pseudo "second United Nations," complete with its own committees and councils. LOST creates a bureaucracy that enforces a mandatory arbitration process that will by its nature be adverse to U.S. corporations and infringe on private property rights. LOST provides a forum for China and Russia to pursue threatening territorial claims. China has already manipulated LOST to claim sovereignty over the entire South China Sea, while Russia is pursuing its claim to the North Pole seabed by presenting its data to the LOST Continental Shelf Commission…
From U.S. Navy retired admiral James Lyons in The Washington Times (dated October 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (US/GI)
The Threat of Bioweapons
Biological weapons are among the most dangerous in the world today and can be engineered and disseminated to achieve a more deadly result than a nuclear attack. Whereas the explosion of a nuclear bomb would cause massive death in a specific location, a biological attack with smallpox could infect multitudes of people across the globe. With incubation periods of up to 17 days, human disseminators could unwittingly cause widespread exposure before diagnosable symptoms indicate an infection and appropriate quarantine procedures are in place. Unlike any other type of weapon, bioweapons such as smallpox can replicate and infect a chain of people over an indeterminate amount of time from a single undetectable point of release. According to science writer and author of The Hot Zone, Richard Preston, "If you took a gram of smallpox, which is highly contagious and lethal, and for which there's no vaccine available globally now, and released it in the air and created about a hundred cases, the chances are excellent that the virus would go global in six weeks as people moved from city to city......the death toll could easily hit the hundreds of millions.....in scale, that's like a nuclear war"…
From Janet Ellen Levy at American Thinker (dated July 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (GI/WT/ND)
Case of TB traveler reveals holes in global disease control
The U.S. health authorities failed to notify their Italian counterparts that an American tourist with an extremely dangerous form of tuberculosis was staying in a Rome hotel this month until he was leaving the country, Italian officials said Thursday. That time lapse allowed him to leave Rome and fly to Prague and Montreal, potentially exposing dozens of people to an often lethal germ…The episode revealed holes in international cooperation systems for detecting and isolating people with infectious diseases, experts said. Such deficiencies could be disastrous if the victim were more contagious, as would be likely in an influenza pandemic…
From the International Herald Tribune (dated May 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (GI/US/ND)
Goodbye U.S. dollar, hello global currency
The director of international economics at the Council of Foreign Relations has launched a scathing attack on sovereignty and national currencies. Benn Steil, writing in the current issue of CFR's influential Foreign Affairs magazine, says "the world needs to abandon unwanted currencies, replacing them with dollars, euros, and multinational currencies as yet unborn." In the article, "The End of National Currency," Steil clearly asserts the dollar and the euro are temporary currencies, perhaps necessary today. He argues "economic development outside the process of globalization is no longer possible." His inevitable conclusion is "countries should abandon monetary nationalism"…
From author Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily (dated April 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (GI)
Report says terror attacks up sharply
Terrorist attacks worldwide shot up more than 25 percent last year, killing 40 percent more people than in 2005, particularly in Iraq where extremists used chemical weapons and suicide bombers to target crowds, the State Department said Monday…
Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated April 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (GI/ME/WT)
Solar 'superflare' shredded Earth's ozone
The largest solar flare in the last 500 years may have shredded Earth's ozone layer to a greater extent than human-made chemicals have in recent decades, new research suggests, but the effect was only temporary. If such a flare occurred today, it would likely be even more damaging to the ozone and could increase the rate of skin cancer around the world. On 1 September 1859, the Sun expelled huge quantities of high-energy protons in a 'superflare'. The event was seen on Earth by an observer who noticed a white spot on the Sun suddenly brighten for about five minutes. When the magnetic storm struck Earth, fires started in telegraph stations due to electrical arcing in the telegraph wires. The northern lights, or aurorae borealis, were reportedly seen as far south as Florida in the US. This flare released 6.5 times more energy than the largest solar flare of the satellite era, which occurred in 1989. That flare was strong enough to cause a power blackout in Quebec, Canada. Now, scientists have calculated the ozone depletion from the 1859 solar flare for the first time by studying chemical deposits in Greenland ice cores…
From NewScientist.com news service (dated March 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (GI)
Sun Responsible for Global Warming
Two new reports cast doubt on the manmade global warming theory and instead point to another cause for the recent warming of Earth — changes in the sun. One report from National Geographic News asserts, "Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet’s recent climate changes have a natural — and not a human-induced — cause, according to one scientist’s controversial theory.” Data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey mission in 2005 disclosed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps” near Mars’ south pole had been shrinking for three consecutive summers…The other report offers a mechanism behind the changes in the sun — variations in its magnetic field. Compiled by scientists at the Danish National Space Center, it maintains that the Earth’s climate is strongly influenced by cosmic rays from exploded stars…
From NewsMax.com (dated March 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (GI)
Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn
An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature. A second hexagon, significantly darker than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini pictures…"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is"…
From Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Release (dated March 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (GI/ST)
Asteroid threat demands response, experts warn
Kamchatkans and Venezuelans beware. A 20-million-tonne asteroid could be heading your way. Californians have even more reason to worry - the asteroid is more likely to hit the Pacific Ocean, triggering a tsunami that could devastate the west coast of North America. These are among the scenarios projected for asteroid Apophis, which researchers now say has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting Earth on 13 April 2036. Calculations show it would strike somewhere along a narrow track that stretches eastward from Siberia to the west coast of Africa. Compared to earlier estimates, the new figure represents a further reduction in the threat posed by Apophis…But the threat is real enough, experts argue, to merit a United Nations protocol for dealing with the problem…
From NewScientist.com news service (dated February 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (GI/ND)
Al-Qaeda’s Resurgence, Part 1: Ready to take on the world
Al-Qaeda will this year significantly step up its global operations after centralizing its leadership and reviving its financial lifelines. Crucially, al-Qaeda has developed missile and rocket technology with the capability of carrying chemical, biological and nuclear warheads, according to an al-Qaeda insider who spoke to Asia Times Online. While al-Qaeda will continue to operate in Afghanistan and Iraq, it will broaden its global perspective to include Europe and hostile Muslim states, Asia Times Online has learned. For the first time since its attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, this could be al-Qaeda's year on the offensive…
From Asia Times (dated March 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (GI/WT)
Canada's Jihadist Fifth Column
The fact that some 84,000 Muslims living in a western democratic country sympathize with the aims of these 18 would-be jihadists should not come as a surprise. Their number corresponds to the ten to 15 percent of the one billion Muslims worldwide who, experts say, support jihad. So even if one accepts the lower ten percent figure, that makes one hundred million people -- more than the membership of the Communist and Nazi parties combined -- who wish violent death upon the infidel. Not an insignificant number, to say the least…
From FrontPage Magazine columnist Stephen Brown (dated March 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/GI/RE/WT)
View of US's global role 'worse'
The view of the US's role in the world has deteriorated both internationally and domestically, a BBC poll suggests…
From BBC News (dated January 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (US/GI)
Doomsday Clock moves closer to midnight
The world is nudging closer to nuclear or environmental apocalypse, a group of prominent scientists warned Wednesday as it pushed the hand of its symbolic Doomsday Clock closer to midnight. The clock, which was set two minutes forward to 11:55, represents the likelihood of a global cataclysm…
Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated January 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (GI/WT)
Religious Persecution Growing Worldwide, Group Says
At a time when religious persecution prompts growing international concern, Christian advocates in the U.S. marked Religious Freedom Day Tuesday by drawing attention to those who do not have the freedoms enjoyed by Americans. However, some voiced concern that a bill currently before Congress may dilute religious freedom at home too, by threatening free speech under the guise of outlawing "hate crimes"…
From Cybercast News Service (dated January 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (GI/RE)
Confusing Sun: Will Solar Cycle 24 Be Most Intense On Record?
David Hathaway, Ph. D., Solar Physics Team Leader, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama [said]... Geomagnetic disturbances in the last two or three years tell us that the next cycle [of sunspots and solar flares—2007 to 2012—] ought to be a big cycle - one of the largest on record…[He stated that] this could be the strongest solar maximum in 400 years of record keeping…
From Linda Howe at Earthfiles (dated January 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (GI/ND/ST)
Religion of Peace?: Robert Spencer asks the hard questions
Islam is quintessentially tolerant…a “religion of peace.” This conventional wisdom brims over the mainstream media’s daily servings…But is it true? Emphatically, the answer is “no.” So argues best-selling author and Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer…Painstakingly, Spencer has crafted a biography Islam’s Prophet from the authentic Muslim Sunnah, comprised of [the Koran and other Muslim sources]… The picture that emerges is complex but not ambiguous…
From Foundation for the Defense of Democracies senior fellow Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online (dated January 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (GI/RE/WT)
The War Against Global Jihadism
Given the stakes involved in this war and how little is known, even now, about what is at the core of this conflict, it is worth reviewing in some detail the nature of our enemy - including disaggregating who they are (Shia and Sunni extremists), what they believe and why they believe it, and the implications of that for America and the West…
From White House Office of Strategic Initiatives director Peter Wehner at Real Clear Politics (dated January 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (GI/ME/RE/WT)
The United Nations: Mission Impossible?
As Ban Ki-moon takes charge at the United Nations, we look at the prospects for this troubled body and for its peacekeeping efforts round the world…
From The Economist (dated January 4, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (GI/WT)
The End of Pax Americana?
With hindsight, we may see 2006 as the end of Pax Americana. Ever since World War II, the United States has used its military and economic superiority to promote a stable world order that has, on the whole, kept the peace and spread prosperity. But the United States increasingly lacks both the power and the will to play this role. It isn't just Iraq, though Iraq has been profoundly destabilizing and demoralizing. Many other factors erode U.S. power: China's rise; probable nuclear proliferation; shrinking support for open trade; higher spending for Social Security and Medicare that squeezes the military; the weakness of traditional U.S. allies, Europe and Japan…
From Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson at Real Clear Politics (dated December 13, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (US/GI/WT)
FAQ - The Shiites and the Sunnis
1) Who are the Sunnis and the Shiites?...
From Dean Barnett at Townhall.com (dated December 12, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (GI/ME/RE)
Study Warns of 'Grave and Growing' Threat of Biological Weapons
A prominent research center has published a survey showing the threat of bioweapons is serious and growing…
From Voice of America News (dated November 29, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (GI/WT/ND)
AIDS to be 3rd leading cause of death
Within the next 25 years, AIDS is set to join heart disease and stroke as the top three causes of death worldwide, according to a study…
Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated November 27, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (GI/ST/ND)
The Damned of Darfur
A half-million dead in Darfur; 2.5 million refugees - not counting the corpses lost in the sands or terrified survivors in hiding. Surely, the world will act? No. The world talks. While the militias kill - and years pass. The United Nations looks away - its signature gesture when human rights are violated. Welcome to the triumph of global hypocrisy. Europe wrings its hands - as Europe always does - but declines an invitation to the dance. After all, "responsible" governments can't play fast and loose with another state's sovereignty. No dictator or president-for-life would be able to get a decent night's sleep. So Sudan's Islamo-fascists continue to kill with impunity…
From columnist Ralph Peters in the New York Post, reposted at FrontPage Magazine (dated December 12, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (GI/AF/EU/WT)
Wanted: man to land on killer asteroid and gently nudge it from path to Earth
It is the stuff of nightmares and, until now, Hollywood thrillers. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and mankind is poised to go the way of the dinosaurs. To save the day, Nasa now plans to go where only Bruce Willis has gone before. The US space agency is drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph. It wants to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object when it is eventually identified. The proposals are at an early stage, and a spacecraft needed just to send an astronaut that far into space exists only on the drawing board, but they are deadly serious. A smallish asteroid called Apophis has already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036…
From The Guardian (Manchester, England) (dated November 17, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (GI/ND)
Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse
lawsuit in Germany will seek a criminal prosecution of the outgoing Defense Secretary and other U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo…Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides "universal jurisdiction" allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world…
From Time magazine (dated November 10, 2006)Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (GI/EU/US/WT)
Thirty new countries could acquire nuclear weapon: IAEA chief
Up to 30 new countries could have the capability to build a nuclear weapon, on top of the nine current nuclear powers, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has warned…
Agence France-Presse story at Yahoo News (dated October 16, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (GI/ST/WT)
Seizures of radioactive materials fuel 'dirty bomb' fears
Seizures of smuggled radioactive material capable of making a terrorist “dirty bomb” have doubled in the past four years, according to official figures seen by The Times. Smugglers have been caught trying to traffick dangerous radioactive material more than 300 times since 2002, statistics from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) show. Most of the incidents are understood to have occurred in Europe. The disclosures come as al-Qaeda is known to be intensfiying its efforts to obtain a radoactive device. Last year, Western security services…thwarted 16 attempts to smuggle plutonium or uranium. On two occasions small quantities of highly enriched uranium were reported missing. All were feared to have been destined for terror groups. Scientists responsible for analysing the seizures have given warning that traffickers are turning to hospital X-ray equipment and laboratory supplies as an illicit source of radioactive material…
From The Times (London) (dated October 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (GI/ST/WT)
Ahmadinejad and the Liberalism of Fools
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran not only spoke at the UN – from the very podium used just a few hours before by the leader of the free world – he was also invited to hold forth as a visiting statesman by the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations. So now the world Jewish community must contend with the sad truth that sixty years after the Holocaust a man can declare himself the new exterminator of the Jews and still be treated with respect… All this is done, of course, in the name of freedom of expression. The argument goes that the best way to change evil is to engage in a dialogue with it: If only Ahmadinejad would be exposed to reason he might be won over; if only we could logically point out to him the error of his ways and the insensitivity of his remarks, he would never utter them again. But tolerating the intolerable is the liberalism of fools and gives a safe haven to evil in a world that is sorely embattled…
From Jewish rabbi Shmuley Boteach in The Jewish Press (dated October 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (GI/MO/WT)
'Virtually untreatable' TB found
A "virtually untreatable" form of TB has emerged, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)… TB presently causes about 1.7 million deaths a year worldwide, but researchers are worried about the emergence of strains that are resistant to drugs…
From BBC News (dated September 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (GI/ND)
From bad to worse
Sudan’s government rejects both African Union peacekeepers and UN soldiers in Darfur. With a military offensive underway, the situation in the region looks more dreadful than ever…
From The Economist (dated September 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (GI/ME/WT)
Excess Baggage: The U.N. can't possibly stop Iran
Despite last week's United Nations deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear bomb program, Iran has done no such thing. The next diplomatic move is supposed to be for the U.N. to impose sanctions on Iran. That won't work, either…
From journalist Claudia Rosett in The Wall Street Journal (dated September 3, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (GI/ME/WT)
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