The second Trump administration may presage the significant retrenchment, if not collapse, of what critics call the censorship-industrial complex, a symbiotic and sometimes coercive relationship among the U.S. government, private researchers and Big Tech to suppress disfavored narratives and political movements such as populism.
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President-elect Donald Trump has picked Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik for the role of the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (UN).
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It’s summer, and the Sierra Club says: “This is climate change in action. We are living it.”
The United Nations’ secretary-general declares that “a fossil fuel phaseout is inevitable.” And The Lancet, a respected medical journal, insists that nations must swiftly transition away from hydrocarbons.
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The president of the United States, Joe Biden, signingAn executive order this Tuesday that will allow him to drastically limit asylum requests on the border with Mexico if the number of migrant arrests exceeds a specific threshold, the EFE news agency reported .
This order will allow US authorities to deport those who do not meet strict asylum standards when the number of 2,500 people detained at the border for an average of seven days is exceeded, senior US officials told the press.
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During Bush’s years as president, Democrats frequently criticized his foreign policy, complaining that he acted like a cowboy, pursuing wars unilaterally without the imprimatur of the “international community.” Internationalism was a particular obsession of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, who lambasted the Bush administration for snubbing the United Nations and upsetting France with its Iraq policy.
Obama was mostly a darling of foreign leaders, as he ceded American power and prestige in a bid to right what he considered the historic wrongs of colonialism and western chauvinism. This was evident in his obsession with completing the Iran deal, participating in the Kyoto accords, assisting NATO attacks on Libya and Syria, and in the general tone of public diplomacy during the Arab Spring.
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Few things have escaped environmentalists’ scorn, and even cows have not been exempt from blame for climate change. Emissions from livestock production have become an increasing focus of efforts to fight climate change. The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 11.1% of emissions worldwide come from livestock production, and the organization released a report last year urging Americans to eat less meat. If people aren’t eating meat, the argument goes, then fewer cows are produced. If there’s fewer cows, there’s less emissions.
However, research by pro-agribuisness outfits Alltech and Archbold suggests that the thinking on reducing emissions at the source is missing a bigger picture on cattles’ relationship with the land, and possibly, by removing grazing from pastures, emissions will actually go up.
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A United Nations climate official issued a dire warning by claiming that only “two years” remain to save the world from an environmental crisis.
“When I say we have two years to save the world, it begs the question – who exactly has two years to save the world? The answer is every person on this planet,” UN climate official Simon Stiell said Wednesday during a speech at the Chatham House think tank in London.
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When President Biden’s supporters attacked him for describing the man who allegedly murdered Georgia co-ed Laken Reilly as an “illegal,” they shined a light on one of the most contested words in American politics.
The progressive push to describe border crossers as undocumented or unauthorized can also serve to downplay and obscure the massive issue of crime perpetrated and spawned by the influx of millions of migrants since Biden was elected – often in ways that leave the migrants themselves as victims.
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Since late February, gang violence in Haiti has surged, overwhelming government and security forces and plunging the nation into further turmoil. The United Nations estimates that armed gangs now control 80 percent of the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
The recent wave of violence in the Caribbean nation’s ongoing gang wars erupted as multiple armed groups banded together, pledging to oust Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who came to power after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021 and announced postponing Haiti’s elections again last year.
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We all understand, in the timeless words of the poet Robert Burns, that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Most Americans are accustomed to assessing the various failed initiatives of our country’s leaders as well-intended actions that turned out badly. The Vietnam, Afghan, and Iraq wars, the 2008 financial meltdown, and the COVID pandemic overreaction, all in hindsight, can be viewed as simply the unfolding of human stupidity in the contingency of time.
In accordance, it is understandable that many are inclined to believe that our country’s current serious problems are, once again, merely the failed result of well-intentioned policies. But what if, we ask, seemingly fumbled programs were intended to be the initial throes of civilizational suicide? What if apparent missteps were actually directed at the purposeful destruction of a prosperous, free, safe, and secure society?
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In the most recent “Conference of the Parties,” otherwise known as the United Nations extravaganza that convenes every few years for world leaders to discuss the climate crisis, several goals were publicly proclaimed. Notable were the goals to triple production of renewable energy by 2030 and triple production of nuclear energy by 2050. Against the backdrop of current global energy production by fuel type, and as quantified in Part One, against a goal of increasing total energy production from 600 exajoules in 2022 to at least 1,000 exajoules by 2050, where does COP 28’s goals put the world’s energy economy? How much will production of renewable energy have to increase?
To answer this question, it is necessary to recognize and account for the fact that most renewable energy takes the form of electricity, generated through wind, solar, or geothermal sources. And when measuring how much the base of renewables installed so far will contribute to the target of 1,000 exajoules of energy production per year in order to realize—best-case scenario—800 exajoules of energy services, the data reported in the Statistical Review of Global Energy is profoundly misleading.
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Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it had formed a Guideline Development Group made up of 21 members tasked with writing WHO guidelines on “the health of trans and gender diverse people.”
As a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health, WHO is looked to by most of the world’s nations for leadership on public health policy. Of the world’s 195 countries, 194 are WHO member states, with Taiwan being the lone exception.
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Something eerie, something creepy, is happening in the world — and now in America as well. The dark mood is brought on by elite universities, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry, and massive immigration from illiberal nations and anti-Enlightenment societies.
At Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, hundreds of students rioted on news that a single teacher in her private social media account had expressed support for Israel. Waving Palestinian flags, and screaming violent threats, the student mob rioted, destroyed school property, sought the teacher out and tried to crash into her classroom — before she was saved from violence by other teachers and an eventual police arrival.
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The United Nations is expected to ramp up its calls for the world to greatly reduce meat consumption in order to combat climate change.
During the COP28 climate summit, which starts Thursday in Dubai, the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) will publish a global plan calling on nations with high rates of meat consumption to change their diets in order to lower greenhouse gas emissions, according to Bloomberg News.
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The Biden administration has pledged millions of dollars to a de facto international “climate reparations” fund at the United Nations (UN) climate summit in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The fund, referred to by its proponents as a “loss and damage fund,” is intended to have developed countries transfer money to the developing world as compensation for the impacts of climate change. The U.S. promised more than $17 million to the fund on Thursday, according to Axios.
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The Biden administration is gearing up to finalize a host of emissions rules and regulations in the coming months, E&E News reported Wednesday.
The rules and regulations are all focused on methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent, but dissipates more quickly, than carbon dioxide, and align with the administration’s commitment to attacking climate change with a “whole-of-government” response. The Biden administration is aiming to finalize the slew of methane regulations in the coming months ahead of the 2024 election, which would make the rules more difficult for a potential Republican administration to scrap should President Joe Biden lose, according to E&E News.
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On Dec. 10, the United Nations will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document drafted in the aftermath of World War II under the leadership of American first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
Much has changed since then, including the world body’s understanding of children and of parental rights.
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by Roger Kimball “The climate crisis,” said Al Gore at the U.N. a couple of days ago, “is a fossil fuel crisis.” “What climate crisis?” you might be asking, and you would be right to do so. Yes, it is impossible to turn anywhere in our enlightened, environmentally conscious world without…
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Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and two-term governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson has passed away at age 75.
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by James Cohen A United Nations (U.N.) policy proposal that outlines how to combat online “mis- and disinformation and hate speech,” including through demonetization, is informed by work from groups that actively push to censor conservative speech online. The policy brief, titled “Information Integrity on Digital Platforms,” is intended to help…
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The World Health Organization, widely considered the most powerful health authority in the world, is pursuing a Pandemic Preparedness Treaty that critics say could make the organization even more powerful and jeopardize U.S. sovereignty.
The United Nations-affiliated WHO says the draft treaty – or “zero draft” – is designed to protect the world from future pandemics and last December announced that member states “agreed to develop the first draft of such as a legally binding agreement.”
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The White House announced $1 billion in U.S. support for the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund (GCF) Thursday, ahead of a meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF).
The new U.S. contributions will bring its total investment in the GCF, a U.N. project that promotes green technologies, particularly in developing nations, to $2 billion, according to a White House fact sheet President Biden will also request an additional $500 million from Congress to support the Amazon Fund — an anti-deforestation fund managed by the Brazilian Development Bank to protect the Amazon Rainforest — and promote a variety of green technologies, including carbon capture.
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Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, recently appeared on NPR’s “News Hour” to discuss the looming catastrophe in Somalia and call for more aid to the troubled east African nation. In her interview, she repeatedly cited climate change as the reason for Somalia’s current predicament.
Framing problems, whether they occur in Syria, Somalia, or California, as primarily the result of “climate change” is inaccurate and unhelpful. The drought in the Horn of Africa is indeed severe, so bad, in fact, that NPR reports it as “the worst drought in 40 years.”
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Former LGBTQ activist K. Yang says she is now actively working to “de-program” children who have been indoctrinated in woke gender ideology in public schools with funding from the New York State Department of Public Health.
In an interview Sunday on Fox & Friends Weekend, Yang explained her conversion from an LGBTQ activist who helped indoctrinate young children in government schools in the tenets of gender ideology.
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Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg will not be attending the United Nations’ COP27 climate conference in Egypt because she believes that the conference fails to effectively push the environmental agenda.
Thunberg on Sunday declared COP27 to be a “scam” where world leaders feign concern for the “climate crisis” to get attention during a question and answer session at the launch of her new book in London. The 19-year-old environmentalist said that world leaders are endangering the planet by “lying and cheating” instead of implementing “major changes” to reduce carbon emissions.
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The far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called on the United Nations to demand that the United States hand out reparations to African-Americans over past issues such as slavery.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the ACLU, along with several other left-wing groups such as Human Rights Watch, sent their demands to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, calling on the international organization to force Joe Biden to announce “immediate, tangible measures” to “dismantle structural racism” in the United States.
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Many constitutionalists, lawmakers, and healthcare professionals are sounding the alarm over the Biden administration’s plan to forfeit the United States’ decision-making power over its healthcare policies to the World Health Organization (WHO), an organization Rep. Chip Roy’s office (R-TX) calls a “corrupt, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) entity.”
In January 2021, Roy introduced HR 419, which seeks to end U.S. taxpayer funding of the WHO, an agency of the United Nations, but in recent days more lawmakers have signed on as co-sponsors since proposed amendments by the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the WHO’s International Health Regulations, are scheduled to be voted upon May 22-28 at the World Health Assembly.
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Twitter will no longer sell ads with messaging that contradicts the United Nations’ (UN) scientists, according to a statement from the Silicon Valley tech giant.
“To better serve these conversations, misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change are prohibited, in line with our inappropriate content policy,” the statement says. “We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis. This approach is informed by authoritative sources, like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports.”
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More than two million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded the country, according to data from the United Nations refugee agency released Monday.
The agency said as many as four million people might leave Ukraine as a result of the crisis, with more than one million fleeing in the first week of the attack.
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The United Nations’ refugee agency said Thursday that 1 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded a week ago.
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The United Nations General Assembly has agreed on a definition of Holocaust denial, and moved to urge social media companies to “take active measures” to combat antisemitism.
“The General Assembly is sending a strong and unambiguous message against the denial or the distortion of these historical facts. Ignoring historical facts increases the risk that they will be repeated,” Germany’s U.N. Ambassador Antje Leendertse said Thursday.
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The carbon footprint of COP26, the ongoing United Nations climate summit, is expected to double that of the previous conference held in 2019, according to a report.
The two-week COP26 conference, which is entering its final days in Scotland, is projected to lead to about 102,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide in emissions, according to a preliminary assessment commissioned by the UN from British professional services firm ARUP. That’s the equivalent of more than 225.9 million pounds of carbon emissions.
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The U.S., China and more than 100 other nations signed onto a pact to end deforestation by 2030 at the ongoing United Nations climate summit, the U.K. announced.
“Conserving our forests and other critical ecosystems is indispensable — an indispensable piece of keeping our climate goals within reach as well as many other key priorities that we have together: ensuring clean water, maintaining biodiversity, supporting rural and Indigenous communities, and reducing the risk of the spread of disease,” President Joe Biden remarked on Tuesday.
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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen estimated that the world would need to devote $100-150 trillion, more than the entire world’s annual gross domestic product, to fighting climate change over the next three decades.
Yellen signaled that the world economy will need to undergo a complete transformation in order to prevent devastating climate change in the future, during a speech Wednesday at the ongoing United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. The Treasury secretary delivered the remarks during the summit’s “finance day” opening event.
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The Democrats’ reconciliation package will likely include more than $500 billion worth of climate provisions, more than the entire Department of Energy budget, the White House said, according to The Hill.
The budget represents an opportunity for “historic investment in climate change,” White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said during an event hosted by The Hill on Tuesday evening. The likely price tag for climate programs included in the bill is likely to fall somewhere between $500 billion and $555 billion, Axios previously reported.
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Most countries have fallen far behind the climate pledges they made in Paris more than five years ago, the United Nations said Tuesday ahead of its upcoming climate conference.
Actions taken by nations since 2015 would only reduce emissions 7.5% by 2030, not the Paris Climate Agreement goal of 55%, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report. Climate negotiators determined that a 55% reduction in emissions by 2030 would ensure that the world could meet a goal of capping global warming at 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
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Google and YouTube announced a new policy Thursday demonetizing all content that denies the scientific consensus on climate change.
Google will no longer allow ads for “content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change,” the company announced in a support page added to its website Thursday. The policy, which Google will start enforcing next month, covers YouTube videos and websites that treat climate change as a “hoax or a scam,” content “denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming” and content “denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change.”
The search giant said it was implementing the policy due to pressure from advertisers, who didn’t want their products associated with content promoting climate denial.
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The International Chamber of Shipping, a coalition of truck drivers, seafarers, and airline workers, recently warned heads of state at the United Nations General Assembly that if restrictive COVID policies don’t change and freedom of movement isn’t restored to transportation workers, a supply-chain collapse is imminent.
Industry leaders representing some 65 million transport workers asked the United Nations and heads of government to “take meaningful and swift action to resolve the crisis now.”
“Global supply chains are beginning to buckle as two years’ worth of strain on transport workers take their toll,” they wrote in an open letter signed by the International Air Transport Association, the International Road Transport Union and the International Transport Workers’ Federation.
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Are the January 6 Capitol riot defendants “political prisoners”?
Some conservative activists and Republicans have used the terminology, including Matt Braynard, organizer of the Sept. 18 “Justice for J6” rally at the foot of the Capitol.
The former Trump campaign strategist made the accusation in a complaint against the U.S. with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and said he met with “one of the commissioners” to discuss the complaint.
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Wisconsin Representative Thomas Tiffany (R-07-WI) wrote a letter to the Biden Administration demanding full membership to the United Nations for Taiwan. In a tweet about the letter, Tiffany said, “America doesn’t need a permission slip from Communist China to support our allies.”
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Airbnb, a vacation home rental site, is offering free temporary housing to around 20,000 Afghan refugees across the world, the company announced Tuesday.
“As tens of thousands of Afghan refugees resettle around the world, where they stay will be the first chapter in their new lives,” Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky said in a statement. “For these 20,000 refugees, my hope is that the Airbnb community will provide them with not only a safe place to rest and start over, but also a warm welcome home.”
Around 3.5 million people living in Afghanistan have been displaced, including around 270,000 due to Taliban advances since January, the U.N. reported on July 13. Around 10,400 people were evacuated by U.S. military flights from Afghanistan Sunday and another 6,660 were taken Monday, according to the Associated Press.
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President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he would nominate Cindy McCain to be the U.S. representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture with the rank of ambassador, according to a White House press release.
McCain, the widow of former Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain, has been a critic of Donald Trump and endorsed Biden in the 2020 election, according to the Associated Press.
McCain is the chairman and director of the Hensley Beverage Company, a Phoenix-based alcohol distributor representing Anheuser-Busch, according to the McCain Institute website.
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by Evie Fordham Pundits are already throwing out the names of individuals who could replace outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley after her Tuesday announcement that she intends to step down at the end of 2018. Current U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell is already getting a…
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by Fred Lucas The Trump administration is trying to secure more jobs for American citizens in the United Nations bureaucracy, as a recent State Department report finds woeful underrepresentation even though the United States contributes more to the world body than any other government. The U.S. funds almost one-quarter…
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Reuters Widely accepted numbers on how much of the world’s population lives in cities are incorrect, with major implications for development aid and the provision of public services for billions of people, researchers say. The United Nations predicts the world’s urban population is expected to grow to 70 percent…
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