The Borg Has Completely Assimilated the United Nations

Committee on the Rights of the Child Intent on Promoting Abortion

Posted onSeptember 25, 2014 

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D.

Turtle Bay and Beyond

Below is one of the worst recommendations to ever come out of a UN committee. See the full report here.

Adolescent health

1. The Committee welcomes the consolidation of the National Programme on Sexual and Reproductive Health and the new protocol on adolescent health. It also notes the programmes undertaken to prevent and deal with unplanned teenage pregnancies. However, the Committee is deeply concerned that the State party has one of the highest rates of adolescent pregnancies in the region and that many of them result in maternal deaths.  It is also concerned about the lack of access to safe abortion procedures due to a restrictive law on abortion and the lack of information on the actual impact of the programmes to reduce these pregnancies.
2. In the light of its general comment No. 4 (2003) on adolescent health and development, the Committee recommends that the State party:

(a)      Collect disaggregated data on the number of deaths among pregnant girls and adolescents and undertake a study on the scope and root causes of these deaths;

(b)      Review its legislation on abortion and provide for additional exceptions in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, when the pregnancy poses a risk to the health of the adolescents and when abortion is in the best interests of the pregnant adolescent so as to prevent her from resorting to unsafe abortion. The State party should ensure in law and in practice that the views of the child always be heard and respected in abortion decisions.

(c)       Increase efforts to reduce maternal mortality among adolescents by implementing the existing protocol and providing adequate sexual and reproductive health services, including emergency contraception and ante-natal, delivery, post-natal and post-abortion services. In this endeavor, the State party is encouraged to consider the OHCHR’s technical guidance on the application of a rights based approach to the implementation of policies and programmes to reduce preventable maternal mortality and morbidity (A/HRC/21/22). The State party is also encouraged to seek technical assistance from UNICEF.

Advocates Posing as Academics

Propaganda and The Anti-Smacking Shills

The fallacy of false cause is pretty much universal amongst academics these days–which is to say they cannot think straight.  We have had presented to us one of the more hyper-ventilated examples recently.  In the NZ Herald an Australian academic breathlessly informs us that parental smacking of children to discipline them is utterly terrible.  The academic in question, Bernadette Saunders is introduced to us as follows:

Bernadette Saunders is a Senior Lecturer Social Work at Monash University. She has received two separate funding grants from the Australian Research Council and the Legal Services Board Grants Program to pursue research on the physical punishment /lawful correction of children.

Our academic expert has received money to “pursue research” into the “physical punishment/lawful correction of children”.  This is a thorough misdirection.  Mz Saunders is an ideological advocate, a shill, not an objective researcher.  She is being funded for purposes of propaganda.  She is not an honest trader.  How do we know this?

Firstly, the piece published in the NZ Herald was based upon an article by Saunders published in The Conversation  otherwise known as The Diatribe.

The recently released UNICEF report on violence against children draws on data from 190 countries to present a very grim picture of the physical and emotional harm children continue to suffer. Much of this harm is perpetrated by the adults upon whom the child depends for his or her safety and well-being, guidance and positive example.

The UNICEF report clearly states that violence in all its forms can rob children’s dignity, diminish their self-worth, and threaten their optimal development. Children not only suffer its immediate physical and emotional effects; the violence they see and experience is likely to impact on the type of adult they become and the future society of which they will be part.

The most common form of violence that children suffer is the often taken-for-granted “disciplinary” violence – physical force and verbal intimidation – used by parents and teachers as punishment and or to control or change children’s annoying or unacceptable behaviours. Worldwide, six out of ten children aged between two and 14 are regularly physically punished.

It is dubious indeed that an ostensibly credible academic would cite a United Nations report as any kind of authority.  The UN is a morally bankrupt, corrupt institution and any advocacy by it or its offshoots must be treated with a great deal of caution.  But that aside, the sentence in Saunders’s diatribe which especially caught our eye was this:

In Australia, a study of child homicide between 1991 and 2005 in New South Wales concluded that prohibiting the corporal punishment of children could save children’s lives.  Thirty-five years ago, Sweden became the first country in the world to legally prohibit the corporal punishment of children in all settings. It is now banned in 39 countries, including New Zealand, the only English-speaking country to adopt this progressive step. [Emphasis, ours]

Smacking has been banned in New Zealand now for years.  It is at this point we come to the fallacy of false cause.  Advocates and ideologues allege that parental smacking of children as part of disciplining them is a form of violence against children, which risks subjecting them to ever greater forms of violence (the old “slippery slope” argument).  It is alleged that those parents who smack their children for purposes of correction and training are more likely to beat them mercilessly and even kill them in blind fits of rage.  Really?  But worse, children subject to parental correction by use of a smack or spank are likely, themselves, to become violent adults in time.  Violence begets violence.  That’s why policemen are such violent thugs at home, repeatedly putting choke holds on their four year olds.  That’s why soldiers who have seen active duty bayonet their children and neighbours as they lie sleeping.  That’s why slaughter men at the abattoirs are likely to stab their children at will.  It’s all so obvious.  Right before our eyes.  

If all of the above were even remotely true, New Zealand’s rate of child abuse should now be declining rapidly, since smacking has been banned here long enough now to make a startling impact upon adult-child violence.  New Zealand, thus, has become an interesting test case to see whether the ideologues, such as Saunders, are right, or whether they are engaged in fallacious, crooked thinking.  Clearly, the latter is the case.  Why?  Because, according to the NZ Government, in 2014

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of physical child abuse in the development [sic] world. We also have one of the worst rates of child death by maltreatment within the family.  Children can also be abused emotionally and sexually.  All such abuse has a damaging effect on a child’s well-being and future development. [Emphasis, ours]

Therefore, we are on safe ground to reject utterly the arguments of Mz Saunders and her ilk.  New Zealand made child smacking illegal years ago.  Our rates of family violence are at the highest of the “developed world”.  So, Saunders causal argument trying to link smacking and child abuse collapses in a heap.  She has attempted to pull wool over our eyes using the fallacy of false cause.  In fact, she and her ilk are just plain wrong.  Hucksters.  Propagandists.  Ideologues.  The New Zealand evidence refutes their argument. If smacking to correct and train a child actually cause further violence against children and intra-family violence in general, our rates of physical abuse of children and family violence, now that smacking is illegal, would be declining rapidly by now.  Since the reserve is the case, Saunders’s argument implodes. 

And how about Sweden–that oft-cited paragon of social virtue?  It has also banned smacking many moons ago.  Ah, not so good.  Sweden has the third highest rate of rape in the world; people there fear crime more than in the United States.  The total crime rate is second highest in the world.  The rate of actual assaults in fourth highest in the world. 

The prima facie evidence is the exact opposite: outlaw reasonable force as part of the discipline of children and the outcome is greater crime and greater violence both inside families and outside them.  Now, we would not have the chutzpah of a modern academic to assert that such corollaries are necessarily true.  More research would need to be done.  But the prima facie evidence is much, much stronger than the contrary case asserted by Mz Saunders and her colleagues. 

But advocacy and research have always been a dangerous combination. As the old saw goes, “our advocacy is based upon facts, madam, and if you don’t like our facts, we have different ones.”

More Steps in the Right Direction

Internal Decay and Mounting Indifference

The government in the UK is taking aim at restoring some of its sovereignty which had been traded away by the previous Labour government.  In 1998 Labour passed the Human Rights Act which contained a clause subjecting the UK to human rights decisions made by the European Court.  The Cameron government is planning to reverse that decision, thereby making British human rights legislation the sole preserve of Britain and even giving a possible veto to MP’s over controversial EU human rights decisions.

Long overdue, is our response.  It is now becoming more evident that Cameron’s recent Cabinet reshuffle has not weakened the drive towards re-establishing British sovereignty.  It appears to have turbo-charged it. This, from the Telegraph:

Ministers will “curtail” the power of Europe’s human rights laws to ensure that British courts are “supreme”, the Justice Secretary has said.Chris Grayling said the Tories planned to replace Labour’s human rights act and ensure British law would return to a better “balance of rights in responsibilities” in law and would make “supreme court supreme again”. . . .

Mr Grayling said that the policy document and draft bill setting out how to scrap the Human Rights Act and pull out of the European court of human rights which he promised last September will be published in “due course”. He said the reforms would be supported by the “vast majority” of the British public and will be a popular move with many Euro-sceptic backbenchers.

Under the plans, MPs could be given a veto over unpopular decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights. The Human Rights Act would be replaced with a new British Bill of Rights to give MPs and peers the ability to ensure that unpopular rulings of the European Court in Strasbourg do not apply to the UK.  A passage in the 1998 Human Rights Act which requires minsters to have regard to the European Court will be dropped.  This would have the effect of making the Supreme Court the final arbiter of complex human rights cases, not the European Court in Strasbourg.

This is a positive move for freedom and democracy in the UK–both of which have taken a battering over the past two decades.  The fundamental principle is this: one cannot have democracy, on the one hand, and internationalism, on the other.

Internationalism necessarily subverts and suborns democracies.  The unfortunate European experiment is a case in point.  An un-elected, non-democratic court of human rights makes determinations on human rights that force nations into directions and legislation and practices that do not reflect the will of the people.  The UK government subjected the UK to the European Court’s judgments.  There have been a sufficient number of controversial rulings, contrary to the desires and wishes of the British people, to stir the government into dumping the authoritarian dictat of the European Court of Human Rights.

Britain’s Lord Judge told the BBC that Judge Spielmann was claiming too much power for a body of unelected judges whose rulings could not be challenged. “This is a court which is not answerable to anybody,” he said. “My own view is: stop here.”

Some examples of how British sovereignty and democracy has been attacked by the Court are:

According to English law, all convicted murderers must be sentenced to life imprisonment (this requirement has been enshrined in English law ever since the death penalty was abolished in 1965). Nevertheless, in most cases, prisoners are eligible for parole after a fixed minimum period set by the judge. However, in cases involving exceptionally violent criminals, judges may impose so-called whole-life sentences, meaning the prisoner will never be eligible for release. There are currently 49 criminals serving whole-life terms in the prison system of England and Wales.

But the ECHR—in a landmark case called Vinter vs. the United Kingdom—ruled in July 2013 that life sentences without any prospect of release or review amount to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and thus are a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.  The ECHR ordered the British government—which cannot appeal the decision—to inform the Council of Europe (the enforcer of ECHR judgments) within six months as to how it would apply the ruling to the whole-life sentences given to three convicted killers—Jeremy Bamber, Douglas Vinter and Peter Moore—whose human rights have allegedly been breached.  [Soeren Kern, The Gatestone Institute]

Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption has gone on record detailing how the European Court has “morphed” from an original mandate to one far more intrusive, controlling and demanding.

Sumption highlighted one example of the ECHR’s “creative” role in reinterpreting the Convention “so as to reflect its own view of what rights are required in a modern democracy.” This approach has “transformed the Convention from the safeguard against despotism which was intended by its draftsmen, into a template for many aspects of the domestic legal order.” It has “involved the recognition of a large number of new rights which are not expressly to be found” in the language of the treaty.

“The process by which democracies decline is…subtle… What happens is that they are slowly drained of what makes them democratic, by a process of internal decay and mounting indifference….” — Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption

“The text of Article 8 protects private and family life, the privacy of the home and of personal correspondence. This perfectly straightforward provision was originally devised as a protection against the surveillance state by totalitarian governments. But in the hands of the Strasbourg court it has been extended to cover the legal status of illegitimate children, immigration and deportation, extradition, aspects of criminal sentencing, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide, child abduction, the law of landlord and tenant, and a great deal else besides. None of these extensions are warranted by the express language of the Convention, nor in most cases are they necessary implications.”

Sumption added:

“The process by which democracies decline is … subtle … What happens is that they are slowly drained of what makes them democratic, by a gradual process of internal decay and mounting indifference, until one suddenly notices that they have become something different, like the republican constitutions of Athens or Rome or the Italian city-states of the Renaissance.”

When an internationalist, unelected body–far, far removed from those influenced by its decisions–is making rulings on “illegitimate children, immigration and deportation, extradition, criminal sentencing, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide, child abduction, the law of landlord and tenant” it has taken over control of life, limb, and liberty.  This is radical, revolutionary stuff.

Internationalism and democratic governments are oil and water.  The former always works to undermine the latter.  Fundamental human freedoms and genuine human rights are choked and expired by an amorphous authoritarian government which does not answer to those it governs.  Power is no longer of the people, by the people, and for the people. 

Thankfully, the United Nations is an unadulterated mess.  We would not have it any other way.  Long may it last as an inchoate, ineffectual, bumbling stewpot, if it continues to exist at all.  But the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights are different beasts entirely. The UK’s intended reversal of course is wise indeed. 

The NewSpeak of Global Schooling

Behind Common Core

By Mary Jo Anderson
Crisis Magazine

The philosophy in the school room in one generation will become the philosophy of government in the next.  — Abraham Lincoln

 [A]t the request of educators I wrote the World Core Curriculum, the product of the United Nations, the meta-organism of human and planetary evolution.   — Robert Muller, former U.N. Assistant Secretary General

The education reform known as Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for grades K-12, adopted by forty plus states and more than half of the U.S. dioceses, is designed to produce a universal “work force ready” population prepared to self-identify as “global citizens.”  Many education professionals have been critical of CCSS. But even they may not know the philosophical reason why financiers like Bill Gates have bankrolled the Common Core system. The same sources of funding for Common Core in the United States are promoting similar methods and aligned texts world wide through the auspices of the United Nations.

In Crisis, readers learned that Common Core is financed with over $150 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The collaboration of the Gates Foundation and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been well publicized.  In addition, Gates, on behalf of his Microsoft Corporation, signed a 26-page Cooperation Agreement in 2004 between Microsoft and UNESCO to develop a “master curriculum” which included benchmarks and assessments.  The agreement stipulates that “UNESCO will explore how to facilitate content development.”

Some have decried Common Core as the nationalization of American education. Far more dangerous, however, is the globalism of Common Core that demotes American values, undermines American constitutional principles and detaches students from their families and faith. Common Core is simply the newest attempt in the decades-old battle (Outcome Based Education, Goals 2000) to impose a U.N. globalist worldview aimed at “peace,” sustainability and economic stability at the expense of freedom.

Briefly, the globalist philosophy calls for the establishment of a global culture based on a commitment to sustainable processes and humanistic ethics to ensure world peace and “fair” distribution of natural resources.  The U.N. serves as the hub for this globalist hope.  Adherents believe that some form of world congress and world citizenship is the end point of political evolution, and, therefore it is inevitable.  What is not certain, in their view, is the time of fulfilment.

Those who hold this philosophy are passionate—they fear that unless a form of world convergence of mind and political will arrives very soon, the planet may fail from wars, global warming and similar threats.  Pick up popular magazines and you’ll find “world leaders,” celebrities and pundits who espouse some version of globalism. How would globalism work at ground level?

A nation is permitted to keep its surface culture, such as language, music, and cuisine. But patriotism, religion, and individualism are anathema, as each competes with the globalist vision of world harmony. Moral codes that cannot be adapted to a multicultural vision, agreed upon in a world congress, must be jettisoned.
But back on the ground, it’s difficult to convince a people to abandon their country and culture, not to mention national resources; resistance would be too great. The quickest effective approach is to invest in education to ensure that the coming generation will embrace the principles of globalism as a natural consequence of their formation.   

Previous Crisis articles have detailed the lack of academic rigor of CCSS for both math and English Language Arts. Teachers have reported disturbing “aligned texts” that contain crude, sexually explicit reading selections for young teens. Parents have questioned multiple examples of anti-American sentiment (the Boston Tea Party as a terrorist attack, for example).  Despite this outcry, Common Core defenders insist that the standards are necessary, even though it only prepares students for admission to junior college.  If the standards are substandard, why are hundreds of millions of Gates and other foundation monies, as well as over a billion dollars in government carrots, being pumped into this ‘transformation” of education?  The goal is not academic excellence, but to reconstruct the nations of the world into a new, interdependent model. Their educational model is aimed at an economically stable world with “workforce ready” workers who share the same globalist vision.

UNESCO’s first Director-General was Sir Julian Huxley, who wrote, “The world today is in the process of becoming one … political unification in some sort of world government will be necessary…” UNESCO’s mission is to “construct” the U.N. model of peace “in the minds of men”:  “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.”

How do you enter the “minds of men” for this reconstruction?  The quickest route to a transformed society is through education.  The U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals, adopted in 2000, include universal education, under the auspices of UNESCO. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the primary public face of Common Core, prizes its partnership with UNESCO to insure global standards for educating tomorrow’s labor force via Education for All (EFA).

Another champion of CCSS and UNESCO is Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education.  Duncan addressed UNESCO in 2010 on “transformational education”:

And transformational reform especially takes time in the United States…. That goal can only be achieved by creating a strong cradle-to-career continuum that starts with early childhood learning and extends all the way to college and careers.

Duncan discussed Common Core as a means to reconstruct education in the United States, and noted the increased role of the federal government in education.   Duncan acknowledged the need for America to learn from other nations. He restated President Obama’s commitment to international cooperation for economic viability: “Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.”

As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can only produce precarious results…. The school should therefore use the means described earlier to combat family attitudes

Existing national models must be deconstructed for this global transformation to occur. UNESCO began the deconstruction of national education systems in 1949 with a pamphlet, “Towards a World Understanding, Vol.V: In the Classroom with Children Under Thirteen Years of Age” (Paris, 1949).  The pamphlet states, “As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can only produce precarious results…. The school should therefore use the means described earlier to combat family attitudes…” (p. 54-5).

A similar sentiment permeates Common Core aligned texts, many developed by Pearson Education, an international education Goliath—that has also received funds from the Gates Foundation to develop Common Core material.  Pearson produces texts that promote “reconstructed” school practices for social justice.  An example of Pearson texts for Common Core that raised some eyebrows recently includes this grammar lesson on editing possessives: “[The president] makes sure the laws of the country are fair,” “The wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation” and “The commands of government officials must be obeyed by all.”

A similar sentiment permeates other Common Core aligned texts. Concepts found in grade school children’s textbooks such as justice and equality are given politically biased meanings. Justice is newly defined to mean the redistribution of wealth and resources. Equality is used to dismantle preference for one’s own culture, religion and social customs. “Predictive information,” data ostensibly gathered on each student to improve performance, is in truth a measurement of a student’s adjusted attitude and behavior—a Soviet style “managed outcome.”

The Russian model, in fact, is codified in the US agreement to the Moscow Declaration, which states: “Ministers recognized that the internationalization of education is a reality.”  The agreement U.S. officials signed calls for a program, “…implemented by education ministers of all the world countries and international organizations, including the World Bank, UNESCO, and UN” (ITAR-TASS, 6-2-2006). The U.S. Department of Education said the member delegates “pledged to share best practices across borders” to build “education systems that can allow people … to live and contribute to a global society, and to work in a global economy” (U.S. Dept. of Education, 6-2-2006).

U.N. affiliated organizations, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank also reflect UNESCO’s vision.  Loans are made and trade preferences are granted to those nations or entities that promote “twenty-first century thinking.”   Most chilling is that UNESCO fronts the implementation of the U.N. plan known as Agenda 21.  Enacted in 1992, Agenda 21 strives to “reorient” the world’s education systems to achieve sustainable development: “Both formal and non-formal education are indispensable to changing people’s attitudes … and behaviour consistent with sustainable development” (# 36.2).

And now we arrive back at Gates’s agreement with UNESCO. EFA contains repeated units on collectivism, shared goals and sustainable development as does CCSS.  Note this passage from the EFA’s Global Monitoring Report:

It is crucial that education stakeholders are well positioned … in advancing a wide range of other development goals.  The GMR will provide Policymakers … stakeholders with powerful new evidence to show why it is crucial that equitable learning be given its rightful place at the centre of the post 2015 global development architecture. It will identify the types of reforms in teaching and learning that are needed to promote transformative change.

Sustainable development is the soft power structure intended to achieve manageable populations and absolute control of global resources, all in the name of “peace.”  It is ruled by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats—and certain philanthropic billionaires.
 
Academia, public policy institutes and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) promote this globalist vision. One particularly noteworthy recent example comes from Oxford University where the Oxford Martin School Commission released a report on October 16. The purpose of the Commission is to “anticipate the consequences of our collective actions, and influence policy and behaviour accordingly.”  A pre-publication statement by Commission chairman, Pascal Lamy, former Director General of the WTO, repeated the mantra, “The ability to address today’s global challenges is undermined by the absence of a collective vision for society. We urge leaders to establish shared global values….”

These lofty sentiments of transnational corporations and associations have influenced American school districts for years. For example, one can point to the 2008 Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents position paper, “Global Education: A Call to Action.” In it we read:

[M]obility of populations fuel renewed calls for mutual understanding and appreciation on a global scale … Global education, when seen through this lens, is more about understanding, cooperation, and world peace.  [Schools are to] [i]nclude expanded treatment of global concepts in the next revision of the curriculum frameworks in social studies [and] [p]rovide resources to educators to promote the integration of global concepts into the curriculum.

Common Core exemplars and aligned texts are designed to cause disorientation for the American child by de-emphasizing national cultural identity. At home he learned to be proud of his country, to respect the flag and the Constitution, but under CCSS the child will find few positive images of America.  Of the texts suggested for kindergarten and first grade none teach the concept of freedom, or offer a song (America the Beautiful?) or any story praising heroes of the American Revolution. Children of this age naturally want to love family and friends, discover a sense of belonging and develop an identity.  Common Core avoids “cultural bias” by discouraging the development of a patriotic attachment to the nation state.

IIt’s difficult to conceive of a student learning virtue, self-sacrifice, courage, perseverance, mercy, regret or triumph by reading maintenance manuals.

International student testing materials encourage this trend. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is administered to 15 year-old students every three years in most of the world’s developed nations.  The PISA standings drive text selection for reading literacy. To avoid cultural bias, PISA defines literacy as the ability to read the material required for workplace proficiency, rather than works of literature.

Therefore, utilitarian texts, such as EPA manuals and assembly instructions account for fifty percent of reading assignments under the CCSS.  Students are deprived of decent grounding in the great works of literature.  As a result, students are less likely to appreciate the cultural heritage of the West.  It’s difficult to conceive of a student learning virtue, self-sacrifice, courage, perseverance, mercy, regret or triumph by reading maintenance manuals.  There is more to good citizenship than “workplace proficiency.”

Yet, CCSS promoters insist that citizenship is addressed. For example, the New York State Common Core Social Studies Framework states:

The primary purpose of Social Studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.

This sounds reasonable enough to the casual reader.  A deeper examination must match this rationale with the actual content of texts and tests. Then it becomes clear that the language of the rationale holds different meanings to those who designed the texts and tests with an agenda in mind.

An iconic example of this tactic is at the United Nations where the stealth phrase “health and reproductive rights” seems to promise decent prenatal care. Nothing in the phrase suggests abortion and sterilization, but those are the intended “rights.”  Thus, in the New York framework, the word “informed” should prompt the question, “informed with what information?” And the phrase “public good” must answer “whose definition of public good?”  Is same-sex parenting a public good? And what of the phrase, “culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world?”  Should we be comfortable with a goal that fails to emphasize American cultural achievements, American citizenship, American constitutional principles and civic virtues?  Or do we realize that the “framework” reorients students toward the vision of a secular, globalist humanism?

It appears that few recognize this gambit under the guise of education for “job security” in the global economy. If it is a globalized world, the reasoning goes, then blurring the lines of culture and country must be achieved in order to insure a cooperative workforce with fewer cultural divisions or religious tensions. A tractable workforce asks no questions because it has no foundation of knowledge from which to form the questions.

Common Core is the latest blueprint for a techno-serfdom, workers managed for the global economy. Student and teacher are transformed indeed—into utilitarian tools of global commerce: The student is a product, schools are processing plants, and teachers are information delivery agents.  The socialist “workforce management” scheme is the inverse of American principles where free persons find their own vocation and pursue it according to their talents. The “workforce” model believes that the state can anticipate the workforce needs of the economy, then train workers “cradle to career.”

Common Core is part of the subterranean template in place to indoctrinate our society into accepting “workforce security” in exchange for a global public square where American values are a distant memory, and Christian, especially Catholic, practice is confined behind church doors.  Perhaps with an awareness of this abandonment of fidelity to particular national values in the face of globalizing pressures, Pope Francis this week warned against worldly “hegemonic uniformity”: “And this is the fruit of the devil, the prince of this world, who leads us forward with the spirit of worldliness…. They accepted the habits of the pagan … that all should be one people, and everyone would abandon their customs. A globalizing conformity of all nations is not beautiful” since “it is the hegemonic uniformity of globalization, the single line of thought” rather than a unity of nations each with its own unique customs and traditions that make up a particular civilization. If education is reduced to job training, the consequences will be tragic. As C. S. Lewis reminds us, “If education is beaten by training, civilization dies … civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost.”

Mary Jo Anderson is a Catholic journalist and public speaker. She has been a frequent guest on “Abundant Life,” an EWTN television program, and her “Global Watch” radio program is heard on EWTN radio affiliates nationwide. She writes regularly for Crisis Magazine and is a contributing correspondent for WorldnetDaily.com. More articles and commentary can be found at Properly Scared and at Women for Faith and Family. Mary Jo is a board member of Women for Faith and Family and has served on the Legatus Board of Directors. With co-author Robin Bernhoft, she wrote “Male and Female He Made Them: Questions and Answers about Marriage and Same-Sex Unions,” published in 2005 by Catholic Answers. In 2003 Mary Jo was invited to the Czech Republic to address parliamentarians on the Impact of Radical Feminism on Emerging Democracies.

Ave, United Nations

The World’s Windbag

Our view of the UN is that it is not a pretty place.  It is hopelessly compromised, riddled with corruption, and not in any position to show moral leadership to anyone.  So, when the even more compromised UN committee on human rights slams the Roman Catholic Church for its “record” on homosexuality (which it opposes and rejects as unChristian, immoral and condemned by God), abortion (an act of murder, to be opposed by all Christians and likewise condemned by God Himself) we could not repress a cynical laugh. 

Really.  So, maybe the great and glorious and oh-so-authoritative UN committee on human rights would disclose by what authority it asserts that the unborn child is inhuman or non-human.  By what standard does the UN asserts that homosexuality is moral, and a human right.  The only possible response the committee could make to such interrogation would be to claim that somewhere along the line, some UN body (possibly the committee itself) took a vote on the matter and decided by some sort of majority that “a” was ethical and “b” was not.  To which we retort, any morality grounded on votes is not morality at all.  It is mere relativist bumpkinism.  It is nothing more than standover tactics by a majority against a minority.
  On that basis, the Nazis could legitimately claim complete moral rectitude in their ultimate solution with respect to the Jewish people.  For our part, we could not give a fig about “morality” according to the giant statue of Man.  It is a foolish contradiction in terms. 

There are two other things condemned by the UN Committee.  The first is the Roman Catholic Church’s view on contraception; the second is its position and handling of pederasty within the church.  Since the Roman Catholic Church has condemned pederasty, the real criticisms are about tactics and procedures and processes.  This has been a great scandal, and a cause of much anguish to all Christians.  We grieve along with our Roman Catholic friends, and, we are persuaded, with the Roman Catholic Church itself.  We suppose there is much work still to be done; we are thankful for progress made in recent years. 

The matter of the Roman Catholic Church’s view of contraception is where we part company, only insofar as we do not find this to be condemned or forbidden in Holy Scripture.  Thus, we believe it it a human law, not grounded in God’s law.  The only contraceptions we find condemned (by good and necessary consequence) are those which involve the purposively caused death of the conceived, unborn child–a prohibition derived from the commandment, Thou shalt not murder. 

But the issue at stake here is the authority or the foundation of morality and ethics.  The Christian faith and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is grounded in God and His absolute, eternal law; the Church’s axiology and morality are likewise grounded.  The UN has no such authority, no such ground.  Its moral judgements quiver on sinking sand, swamped by relativist liquefaction.  It’s moral judgements are not worth the paper they are written on.  It has no ethical authority, no absolute standards, no firm ground–merely the prejudices of some faux majority on any given day. 

For our part, we despise the idol gods of mammon.  But there is a flip side to all this nonsense.  The UN also claims to acknowledge and respect religious freedom.  So with this judgement upon a particular church, is the UN now presuming to decide which religions and which religious principles and doctrines it finds tolerable?  It appears that the UN has decided that it has the authority to discriminate against particular religions, or religious teachings.  Which makes the UN even more of a mockery–a windbag, replete with gaseous hypocritical inanities.

Potemkin Villages

Why Bother?

Blog Turtle Bay and Beyond has been calling our attention to the Samantha Powers, new US ambassador to the UN, who has asked people to let her know what views and priorities she should promote on behalf of the US at the UN.

Samantha Power, the new U.S. ambassador to the UN, wants to know: how can she best promote American values and human dignity? What should the U.S. stand for in the world? . . .  Pres. Obama and former Sec. Hillary Clinton made abortion and sex (particularly homosexuality) top foreign policy priorities. A few years ago I was asked to give a speech at the UN on how marriage and family benefit women. A U.S. delegate came with a prepared statement criticizing me for not promoting sexual and reproductive rights.

It was an odd, angry and arrogant statement. And made the U.S. appear obsessed with sex and abortion to the point that it would not allow a meeting to proceed without mention.  Other countries are “fed up” (as they put it) with this “obsession.” This spilled into the open recently when discussions on migration trends got overwhelmed with 40 references to sexual and reproductive issues, while food, health, education and other basic needs got only one or two mentions.  “We don’t want migrants to think that their only/most important right is to sexual and reproductive health,” a delegate politely objected.

We will make a tentative prediction: when the “consultation” is complete we will be told, firstly how extensive the consultation has been.  Then we will be told that the major concerns people want the US ambassador to promote at the UN are–wait for it–abortion and homosexuality.  (Powers, incidentally, has a reputation of being not just Left on the spectrum of political ideology, but loony Left.)  American imperialism at its most immoral nadir.

UN as Prostitute

Nordics Launder LGBT Advocacy through UN Human Rights Office

Posted on | May 9, 2013 by Wendy Wright
Turtle Bay

The UN human rights office is desperate for funding. Navi Pillay, the head of the office, is in New York this week to report on her agency’s work to UN diplomats. Overwhelming her presentation is an unabashed plea for money. The Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has more work assigned to it from the Human Rights Council than it can afford.

Which made me wonder: Why then is the UN Human Rights Office expending so much money and effort on promoting sexual orientation and gender identity, something that isn’t a recognized human right?

At a meeting today, I asked Navi Pillay where the funding comes for its work on sexual orientation and gender identity. She said some countries have also asked about that. It comes from Nordic countries.
About one-third of the Human Rights Office’s overall expenditures is paid from its regular budget, she explained, while two-thirds comes from extra-budgetary sources.

Nordic countries – especially Norway – are unabashedly aggressive in pushing abortion. Now they are outsourcing – or laundering – their promotion of homosexuality through a UN agency.

This, of course, lowers the credibility of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. At the least, when it comes to sexual orientation, its work will be viewed merely as a hired gun.

All countries work through transnational institutions like the UN to pressure other countries. But this wholesale laundering is intended to hide the fingerprints of those pulling the strings. Taking advantage of the UN agency on human rights to give a veneer of legitimacy to a favored issue is a ploy that will discredit the field of human rights.

Vanity of Vanities

Scientists Call Foul on Ban Ki Moon

The United Nations has always been a sorry affair.  Its every failing is reflexively exploited as another argument for the UN to have more power and influence and control over peoples of the world.  Its vast removal from those it would govern necessarily means that the UN will always be a club for elites who profess to know what is good for us better than we ourselves do. It is a sorry, yet dangerous, institution.

Ban Ki Moon, the current Secretary General, is an ardent provocateur for the global government overreach required to deal with the global problem of man-caused global warming.  He would never have gotten the job had he not been.  This problem is just too big for nation states to deal with, don’t you know.  Therefore the expansion of powers by the UN is essential.  Global warming is, thus,  an ideal pretext for the aspirations of the internationalists.

Ban Ki Moon, consequently, continues to mouth hasty generalizations and platitudes about climate change that have little congruence with truth and fact. Bigger things are at stake. Now, according to the Financial Post, 125 scientists from around the world have called his bluff:

Open letter to UN Secretary-General: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists

H.E. Ban Ki-Moon,
Secretary-General,
United Nations First Avenue and East 44th Street,
New York, New York, U.S.A.

November 29, 2012

Mr. Secretary-General: On November 9 this year you told the General Assembly: “Extreme weather due to climate change is the new normal … Our challenge remains, clear and urgent: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to strengthen adaptation to … even larger climate shocks … and to reach a legally binding climate agreement by 2015 … This should be one of the main lessons of Hurricane Sandy.”

On November 13 you said at Yale: “The science is clear; we should waste no more time on that debate.”
The following day, in Al Gore’s “Dirty Weather” Webcast, you spoke of “more severe storms, harsher droughts, greater floods”, concluding: “Two weeks ago, Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern seaboard of the United States. A nation saw the reality of climate change. The recovery will cost tens of billions of dollars. The cost of inaction will be even higher. We must reduce our dependence on carbon emissions.”

We the undersigned, qualified in climate-related matters, wish to state that current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions.

The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years. During this period, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations rose by nearly 9% to now constitute 0.039% of the atmosphere. Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused the extreme weather of the past few years. Whether, when and how atmospheric warming will resume is unknown. The science is unclear. Some scientists point out that near-term natural cooling, linked to variations in solar output, is also a distinct possibility.

The “even larger climate shocks” you have mentioned would be worse if the world cooled than if it warmed. Climate changes naturally all the time, sometimes dramatically. The hypothesis that our emissions of CO₂ have caused, or will cause, dangerous warming is not supported by the evidence.

The incidence and severity of extreme weather has not increased. There is little evidence that dangerous weather-related events will occur more often in the future. The U.N.’s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in its Special Report on Extreme Weather (2012) that there is “an absence of an attributable climate change signal” in trends in extreme weather losses to date. The funds currently dedicated to trying to stop extreme weather should therefore be diverted to strengthening our infrastructure so as to be able to withstand these inevitable, natural events, and to helping communities rebuild after natural catastrophes such as tropical storm Sandy.

There is no sound reason for the costly, restrictive public policy decisions proposed at the U.N. climate conference in Qatar. Rigorous analysis of unbiased observational data does not support the projections of future global warming predicted by computer models now proven to exaggerate warming and its effects.
The NOAA “State of the Climate in 2008” report asserted that 15 years or more without any statistically-significant warming would indicate a discrepancy between observation and prediction. Sixteen years without warming have therefore now proven that the models are wrong by their creators’ own criterion.

Based upon these considerations, we ask that you desist from exploiting the misery of the families of those who lost their lives or properties in tropical storm Sandy by making unsupportable claims that human influences caused that storm. They did not. We also ask that you acknowledge that policy actions by the U.N., or by the signatory nations to the UNFCCC, that aim to reduce CO₂ emissions are unlikely to exercise any significant influence on future climate. Climate policies therefore need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events however caused.

Signed by:  (the list of signatories, together with their positions and qualifications, can be found here.)

Waste of Time, Money, and Space

 Round and Round the Doha

One of the things we have always appreciated about Greenpeace is their measured language.  It’s a rare thing to encounter eco-warriors (or warriors of any sort, for that matter) speaking in reasoned tones.  Greenpeace have never been guilty of hyperbole, of exaggeration, or anything remotely approaching distortion.  Yet Greenpeace always manages to tell it like it is.  Here are a few classic examples of its mature style and responsible panache:

“Exxon hates your children”
“This is about human survival”
“An Open Letter to Barack Obama: We Are Running Out of Time”
 “Politicians need to cut the crap and cut the carbon!”
“Typhoon hits Philippines, will this be another warning for politicians”

All the above were tweets from Kumi Naidoo, who is self-styled as:  “Activist. Humanist. Speaking truth to power. Greenpeace International Executive Director.”

 So how is the great carbon proliferation in Doha going?
  Exactly as expected.  Nowhere–thankfully.  The problem?  The Telegraph reports that money has run out in the West. 

Developed countries are being pressed to show how they intend to keep a promise to raise climate funding for poorer nations to $US100 billion ($96 million) per year by 2020 – up from a total of $US30 billion in 2010-2012.

Developing countries say they need at least another $US60 billion between now and 2015, starting with $US20 billion from next year, to deal with increased droughts, floods, rising sea levels and storms.  But the United States and European Union have refused to put concrete figures on the table for 2013-2020 funding, citing tough financial times.

“The EU cannot accept a text that includes a commitment to $60 billion in public money in 2015 considering the budget constraints that we face,” French development minister Pascal Canfin told journalists.

Which reminds us that Baroness Thatcher was always right on the money when she reminded us that the problem with Socialism is that it eventually runs out of money–other people’s, that is.  Then, the end will come.  Somehow we don’t think that’s the particular end of the human race contemplated by our reasoned, friendly good old boy, Naidoo.  Activist! Humanist! Speaker of truth to power!   

Junk Science Kills

Millions of deaths later: The birth of the green movement and junk science

The story of how DDT was banned on the back of flimsy scientific evidence is revealing of the green movement more generally
David Atherton

This is the story of how dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), previously used to treat malaria, was banned based on flimsy evidence and ideology, seeing the beginnings of the green industry.

Millions have died as a result. Malaria is a disease that is caused by a bite from a female mosquito, which induces protozoan parasites into the blood stream of the recipient. Reproducing in the liver it can lead to headaches and fever at best, coma and death at worst. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimate in 2010 there were 260 million cases with 665,000 deaths, 86 percent under the age of five.

One of the most effective ways of dealing with malaria is to spray swamps with DDT.
Discovered in 1874, the insecticidal qualities of DDT were not realised until 1939 thanks to Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Muller who was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948.

DDT was first used for this purpose in the Second World War in Italy in 1943. Merck & Company produced and delivered 500 gallons of DDT to Italy to stem an epidemic of louse-borne typhus. The U.S. Army also supplied troops with rations of 10-percent-DDT dust to kill lice.

DDT protected millions of Allied troops from contracting malaria and other infectious diseases like typhus and the plague and also importantly saved the lives of concentration-camp survivors by treating the typhus-carrying lice. Malaria was also wiped out in Italy for good.

In the 1950s and 1960s DDT was also used to startling effect in Sri Lanka. Annual malaria cases in 1948 were 2.8 million, reducing to 17 in 1963. Post spraying saw a rise in cases to 2.5 million. Zanzibar in 1958 saw a drop in prevalence of malaria from 70 percent of the population to 5 percent in 1964. It rose to 55 percent in 1984.

The chief malaria expert for the U.S. Agency for International Development said that malaria would have been 98 percent eradicated had DDT continued to be used. Drs. Michael Arnold Glueck and Robert J. Cihak estimate the widespread use of DDT up until 1970 saved 500 million lives. The benefits are obvious.

Then, in 1962, “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson was published – supposedly documenting the effect of DDT on the environment in harming and even killing not only animals and birds, but also humans. More specifically, the book details alleged causal links between DDT and breast cancer and diabetes in humans, as well as the effects of DDT on egg shell fragility in birds of prey in particular, leading to reductions in population.  

The book’s publication and its influence were profound. It is no coincidence that Al Gore, on its reissue in 1994, wrote an introduction extolling Carson’s book: “Because Carson’s work led to a ban on DDT, it may be that the human species…or at least countless human lives, will be saved because of the words she wrote.” The clown prince of man-made global warming can’t help himself.

Ultimately, DDT was banned in the USA in 1972, with most developed countries following in the 1970s and 1980s.

Finally the Stockholm Convention, signed under the authority of the United Nations Environment Programme in 2001, called for the restriction and elimination of DDT. It was implemented on 17th May 2004 with 173 legally-binding signatures. The only circumstance left open to the use of DDT was “vector control”, where it is sprayed inside homes and on mosquito nets. The World Health Organization as usual likes to get involved in the junk science.

But let’s look at the evidence on DDT. On breast cancer, a study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1997, “Plasma organochlorine levels and the risk of breast cancer”. It concluded that “Our data do not support the hypothesis that exposure to DDT and PCBs increases the risk of breast cancer.” This study is not unique.

Another supposed victim of DDT, the Birds of prey group, has had its numbers closely monitored in the U.S and the number of ospreys grew during DDT usage – from 191 in 1946, to 288 in 1956, to 457 in 1967, and 630 in 1972. A 1969 review of Organochlorine pesticides in Britain found falcon reductions had finished in 1966 despite the use of DDT. It said: “There is no close correlation between the decline in population of predatory birds, particularly the peregrine falcon and the sparrow hawk, and the use of DDT.”

Finally, the hysteria surrounding DDT and the quality of eggshells is also based on shakey ground. The Cecil, Bitman, Harris paper found no effect on eggshells, if adequate calcium is in a DDT diet. Published in Poultry Science in 1971 it concluded: “When carefully reviewed, Dr. Bitman’s study revealed that the quail in the study were fed a diet with a calcium content of only 0.56 percent (a normal quail diet consists of 2.7 percent calcium). Calcium deficiency is a known cause of thin eggshells. After much criticism, Bitman repeated the test, this time with sufficient calcium levels. The birds produced eggs without thinned shells.”

The Dr. ML Scott et al. study in 1975 concluded: “Dietary polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT and related compounds, in well controlled experiments, produced no detrimental effects upon egg shell quality”

In 2004 the late Dr. Gordon Edwards, Professor Emeritus of Entomology at San Jose State University, wrote a devastating critique and bluntly opined: “The ban on DDT, founded on erroneous or fraudulent reports and imposed by one powerful bureaucrat, has caused millions of deaths, while sapping the strength and productivity of countless human beings in underdeveloped countries. It is time for an honest appraisal and for immediate deployment of the best currently available means to control insect-borne diseases. This means DDT.”

That said, under the guidance of no-nonsense Japanese physician public health expert  Dr. Arata Kochi, the WHO is finally allowing the outside use of DDT – it is a shame that it is nearly 40 years too late. 50 million, needless, mainly child deaths later, an apology from the greens and junk scientists would not go unnoticed.
In such a scientifically-advanced world, ideology, dogma, and above all politics shield the truth. There seems, particularly within liberal-left circles, any means of denigrating capitalism, to attack profitable, economic, and socially essential products.

Communism died in 1989 but the need of Communism’s heirs, the liberal-left, remains the same: control. They seek to control our bodies with “health initiatives”, dictating our food, alcohol or tobacco habits; or to control the environment we live in.

AGW global warming, climate change, whatever you wish to call it, is a new cause célèbre for the greens. Rachel Carson and the DDT scandal is yet another sordid tale of faith over science, politics over facts, and death over life. In this case a plague on your house. Of course it will be DDT free.

David Atherton is Chairman of Freedom2Choose, which seeks to protect the informed choices of consenting adults on the issues of smoking. Follow him on Twitter: @DaveAtherton20

Lachrymose and Absurd

Head Shaking, Side Splitting Stuff

The Guardian newspaper has long been an ardent cheerleader of the global warming cause. 

How apt, then, for the Guardian to raise a lament over the latest UN boondogglish talkfest on combating the greatest threat to sentient life ever faced on this planet.  Now, it is worth keeping in mind that the following piece is written in all seriousness.  One cannot suppress belly laughs at the tragi-comic opera, on the one hand, and that the author of this Guardian piece does not get the joke, on the other.

Bonn climate talks end in discord and disappointment

The latest round of international climate change talks finished on Friday in discord and disappointment, with some participants concerned that important progress made last year was being unpicked.

At the talks, countries were supposed to set out a workplan on negotiations that should result in a new global climate treaty, to be drafted by the end of 2015 and to come into force in 2020. But participants told the Guardian they were downbeat, disappointed and frustrated that the decision to work on a new treaty – reached after marathon late-running talks last December in Durban – was being questioned.

China and India, both rapidly growing economies with an increasing share of global emissions, have tried to delay talks on such a treaty. Instead of a workplan for the next three years to achieve the objective of a new pact, governments have only managed to draw up a partial agenda. “It’s incredibly frustrating to have achieved so little,” said one developed country participant. “We’re stepping backwards, not forwards.”

How long will this charade continue, one wonders.  Countries left, right, and centre are backing away.  Everyone else, with an ounce of realism in their heads, can see this thing is dead and buried.  But a few folk, doubtless salaried to promote the cause, keep plugging away. 

Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate chief, said: “The world cannot afford that a few want to backtrack from what was agreed in Durban only five months ago. Durban was – and is – a delicately balanced package where all elements must be delivered at the same pace. It is not a pick and choose menu. It is very worrisome that attempts to backtrack have been so obvious and time-consuming in the Bonn talks over the last two weeks.”

Wethinks Connie is in denial.  A few countries want to backtrack.  Every country outside the EU you mean.  Come on.  This is like a burlesque play where the entire the audience knows that the hero is actually a terrible fool.  But, no, wait–some progress was actually made.  More clarity was produced on “technical and legal details”.  That’s good. 

However, they agreed much of the detail that will be needed to extend the Kyoto protocol – currently the world’s only legally binding treaty on emissions cuts – beyond 2012 when its current provisions expire. . . . Chrisiana Figueres, the top climate change official at the United Nations, who presided over the two weeks of talks, said: “Work at this session has been productive. Countries can now press on to ensure elements are in place to adopt the Doha amendment to the Kyoto protocol. I am pleased to say that the Bonn meeting produced more clarity on the protocols’s technical and legal details and options to enable a smooth transition between the two commitment periods of the protocol.”

That sounds weighty and momentous.  But the following paragraph puts this “progress” in context.  

However, the only major developed countries that have agreed to continue the Kyoto protocol are those of the European Union. Canada and Japan have dropped out, and the US never ratified the 1997 accord. (Emphasis, ours)

Wethinks the European Union is not going to exist in its current form by year’s end.  More debt in order to pay off less developed countries will go down like cold vomit.  So much for Kyoto.  But hope springs eternal in the human breast it would seem.

Celine Charveriat, advocacy and campaigns director at Oxfam, said: “No progress was made to deliver the financial support that the world’s poorest and most vulnerable need to deal with the growing impacts of climate change. It is now vital that, at the next UN climate summit in Qatar in November, rich countries commit to an initial US$10-15bn to the Green Climate Fund between 2013 and 2015, as part of a broader financial package.

“At a time when ambitious emission reductions are more urgent than ever, developed countries in Bonn made no progress to close the gap between current climate targets and what is required to avoid the worst of climate change. Developed countries must improve on their current low level of ambition and accept higher reduction targets no later than at the Qatar summit.”

What part of the planet do these folk actually live on?  Disneyland?  Fantasyland?

Tove Maria Ryding, coordinator for climate policy at Greenpeace International, said: “Here in Bonn we’ve clearly seen that the climate crisis is not caused by lack of options and solutions, but lack of political action. It’s absurd to watch governments sit and point fingers and fight like little kids while the scientists explain about the terrifying impacts of climate change and the fact that we have all the technology we need to solve the problem while creating new green jobs.”

Yes, truly absurd.  But, dear Ms Ryding, you play your part so ardently, so passionately, so fulsomely.  Exquisite burlesque and parody. 

A photograph of the top climate change official at the United Nations accompanied the Guardian piece.  It says it all.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), gives a press conference on May 25, 2012, at the end of a UN climate conference in Bonn, western Germany.