Displaying the most recent of 90914 posts written by

Ruth King

The hidden agenda behind ‘climate change’ By John Eidson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/the_hidden_agenda_behind_climate_change.html

In comments that laid bare the hidden agenda behind global warming alarmism, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, let slip during a February 2015 press conference in Brussels that the U.N.’s real purpose in pushing climate hysteria is to end capitalism throughout the world:

This is the first time in human history that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally changing [getting rid of] the economic development model that has reigned since the Industrial Revolution.

The economic model to which she referred is free-market capitalism. A year earlier, Figueres revealed what capitalism must be replaced with when she complained that America’s two-party constitutional system is hampering the U.N.’s climate objectives. She went on to cite China’s communist system as the kind of government America must have if the U.N. is to impose its environmental will on the world’s most free and prosperous capitalist nation. In other words, for the U.N. to have its way, America must somehow be transformed into a communist nation.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Figueres is not alone. Another senior U.N. official had comments of his own about the true agenda behind “climate change.” If you’re among those who still believe climate alarmists when they say all they’re trying to do is save the planet, what Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer had to say will leave your jaw on the floor.

In a Nov. 14, 2010 interview with the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Edenhofer, co-chair of the U.N. IPCC’s Working Group III, made this shocking admission:

One must free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. [What we’re doing] has almost nothing to do with the climate. We must state clearly that we use climate policy to redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.

Believe the Women? By Rael Jean Isaac

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/believe_the_women.html

As Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court has been disrupted by the #Me Two Movement’s chant “Believe the Women,” it is worth recalling the origins of this slogan — and the huge damage it wreaked in its first incarnation. It is also worth considering what light the earlier Believe the Women movement can throw on the current allegations.

I described its origin in 2001 in The Women’s Quarterly. I noted it could be traced to a single moment in history, April 17, 1971, when the New York Radical Feminists, a group that at its height boasted no more than 400 members, held a groundbreaking conference on rape, a subject long considered taboo. The event produced an unlikely star, Florence Rush, a middle-aged social worker who had never been raped. It was the conclusion to her speech that electrified the audience. “The family itself is an instrument of sexual and other forms of child abuse… permitted because it is an unspoken but prominent factor in socializing and preparing the female to accept a subordinate role… In short the sexual abuse of female children is a process of education that prepares them to become the wives and mothers of America.” A participant, Susan Brownmiller, who would go on to write a book on rape, recalled: “I have been to many feminist meetings, but never before, and not since, have I seen an entire audience rise to its feet in acclaim. We clapped. We cheered.”

Feminist writers would begin to outdo each other in their estimates of incest victims. Catherine MacKinnon, the law professor who helped develop the legal definitions of sexual harassment, announced that 4.5% of all women are victims of incest by their father and if brothers, stepfathers, uncles and family friends were thrown in, the figure rose to 40 percent. Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman dedicated her 1981 book Father-Daughter Incest, to the women “estimated by us to be in the millions, who have personally experienced incestuous abuse.”

At the time of the 1971 conference psychiatric textbooks estimated the rate of father-daughter incest at one to two for every million women in the United States. If that figure was accurate, it was not surprising that incest attracted little public attention. On the other hand, if, in fact, fathers were sexually abusing millions of daughters, why did no one know of it?

UN Secretary-General: Tobacco Use Causing Climate Change By Bridget Johnson see note please

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/un-secretary-general-tobacco-use-causing-climate-change/
I think all the hot air coming from the UN is the real contributor to climate change….rsk
Using tobacco contributes to climate change and human-rights abuses, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a message to the Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in Geneva today.

The treaty was adopted in 2003, and the United States is one of six countries that signed it but never ratified the pact. Another nine nations never signed the FCTC.

The agreement put forth minimum regulations for the sale and distribution of tobacco products, as well as production and taxation. Member states are encouraged to make their own tobacco rules even tougher than the base standards in the treaty.

Guterres noted that with “7 million people dying annually due to tobacco, this treaty is central to improving global health.”

“It is also essential for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 3, which calls on us to ensure healthy lives and promote well‑being for all,” he said. “Significant achievements have been made in implementing the Convention. The new Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products has also advanced tobacco control globally.”

“But tobacco use harms much more than our health. It contributes to climate change and deforestation, and to human rights abuses across the supply chain. The Convention Framework provides tools to tackle these problems, contributing to sustainable development more broadly.”

The secretary-general said the work of the convention “requires a holistic approach that goes beyond health and embraces all areas in which tobacco has an impact.”

Dr. Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, head said at the conference that the body had “stimulated the establishment of observatories to monitor the deceiving strategies of the tobacco industry in a number of countries with the aim to have a global platform containing real-time information.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Hezbollah South of the Border: A Rare U.S. Government Update By Todd Bensman

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/hezbollah-south-of-the-border-a-rare-u-s-government-update/

As a working journalist in 2007, I traveled to Nicaragua to find out why Iran had just set up shop in the country after the election of U.S nemesis President Daniel Ortega. In Managua, I found the Iranian compound in a posh neighborhood, guarded by a coterie of Nicaraguan troops. For about three days, I episodically knocked on the tall metal gates asking to interview the new Iranian ambassador. “Soon, very soon, but not today,” a polite aide always told me.

Frustrated that all I was getting to see was the peak of a limp Iranian national flag jutting up over the tall gates, I clambered up to the roof of a tall neighboring building and shot some photos of the compound’s interior, spy-like, then went off to interview Sandinista leaders and regular citizens about the Iranians encamped in their country.

Then, just as now, there was good reason for public interest and inquiry. What Iran and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah were doing at that time in Venezuela, Bolivia, and the Tri-Border Area of South America mattered on several American security and foreign policy counts. For one thing, as the 1992 and 1994 Hezbollah bombings of Jewish facilities in Argentina demonstrated, Iran and Hezbollah in America’s backyard projected a credible threat of physical retaliation against American interests and allies should saber-rattling ever go military over Iran’s nuclear program. That’s no less true today, as President Trump and various Iranian leaders trade war cries over sanctions and nukes. A U.S.-Mexico border, meanwhile, beckons just a few countries away.

For years, the main source of updated reporting about Hezbollah south of our border came from think tanks and some media, sometimes citing sources of unknown provenance. Certainly, not much ever came from the U.S. government or American intelligence agencies tracking the situation because that stuff is kind of secret.

However, an update of sorts on Hezbollah in Latin America is available from an official government source. The U.S. State Department released its annual “Country Reports on Terrorism” last month, looking back on the year 2017. The information about Hezbollah in Latin America had to be stitched together from tidbits here and there in its 340 pages (the entirety of which can be read here). What gives this information more gravitas than other sources about Hezbollah in Latin America is that State Department analysts put it in, and it survived internal review processes. Decent intelligence probably backs it up.

For starters, Hezbollah has indeed “maintained an interest in the region” through 2017, primarily “in financial and fundraising activities.” The report also hints at darker Hezbollah pursuits in the region. Countries where Hezbollah has been active in recent years include Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Panama, Bolivia, and Argentina. CONTINUE AT SITE

United States is Doing More to Fight Yemen’s Humanitarian Crisis than the Press Knows by Ahmed Charai

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13058/yemen-crisis-united-states

Despite hard fighting and air strikes from Saudi and United Arab Emirates warplanes, the Houthis still control about one-quarter of Yemen’s sprawling desert lands, including its capital city, Sana’a.

The UAE Red Crescent Society recently distributed food aid in Southern Yemen, temporarily sparing some 1,000 families the horror of starvation. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, directed the emergency response project.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration, has quietly met the challenge. The U.S. has shipped more than $854 million in aid since the start of fiscal year 2017. The good news about the bad news is that the U.S. in engaged and helping.

“The world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” said U.N. World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley, is in Yemen.

He is not exaggerating. More than 75% of the country needs humanitarian aid—a greater percentage than any other nation on Earth, according to the U.S. Department of State

Some 18 million Yemenis (out of a total population of 22 million) are hungry, homeless and increasingly hopeless.

Civil war has driven them from their homes, burned their schools and bombed their hospitals. In the markets, the shelves are empty as few trucks arrive from sea ports and rebel roadblocks menace the few deliverymen that dare to take the roads into the sun-scorched interior. As a result, mothers, some too hungry to nurse their children, have flooded into refugee centers, overwhelming

international aid workers. The men, those who have not been murdered or maimed by war, wait in the shade of U.N. tents for food and medicine that too often is not enough.

Trump’s Instincts Triumph on Trade His unconventional methods didn’t lead to the catastrophe critics promised. By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-instincts-triumph-on-trade-1538433226

The midnight Sunday deal between U.S. and Canadian negotiators was a decisive victory for President Trump’s unconventional approach to trade. Even the administration’s fiercest critics are calling the revisions significant. For the first time, Mr. Trump and his allies can point to significant progress toward his core campaign promise of renegotiating trade deals to the benefit of the U.S. workers.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement requires that cars be made with 75% North American components to escape tariffs. Forty percent of each car must also be manufactured in facilities where workers earn $16 an hour or more on average. Crucially, Canada has also cracked open the door to its dairy markets for American farmers.

President Trump’s critics will ask, not unfairly, if the incremental gains are worth a year of upheaval and strained relationships among the Nafta partners. Free-trade supporters will argue that the new, more restrictive pact will slow growth in the North American economy and erode the foundations of the global trading system. Indeed, there is no guarantee the USMCA will make it through Congress, especially if the Democrats take one or both houses in the coming midterms.

But for Mr. Trump, trade deals with Mexico, Canada and South Korea—and progress in discussions with the European Union and Japan—allow him to wrong-foot his critics once again. Contrary to the dire warnings in many quarters, Mr. Trump’s unorthodox methods haven’t set off ruinous trade wars or caused a global depression. And while the new agreements are hardly revolutionary, many Americans not familiar with the fiendish complexity of trade negotiations will take the USMCA as a sign that Mr. Trump’s aggressive methods work. CONTINUE AT SITE

Kavanaugh’s Foes Politicize the FBI Their demands amount to a criminal probe. That would destroy the judicial confirmation process. By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Kristi Remington

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kavanaughs-foes-politicize-the-fbi-1538433332

The bipartisan bonhomie occasioned by the reopening of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s background investigation dissipated quickly. By the weekend, Senate Democrats—who had demanded the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation—were challenging its credibility, objecting to its scope and focus, and lamenting that the White House had any involvement in shaping the process.

The reopened investigation, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham—reflecting the White House’s view—potentially entailed interviewing Deborah Ramirez, who claims that Judge Kavanaugh committed lewd conduct while a freshmen at Yale, and the three purported witnesses named by first accuser Christine Blasey Ford—Mark Judge, P.J. Smyth and Leland Keyser—all of whom have attested they have no memory that would corroborate her accusation. Julie Swetnick’s sordid and implausible claims were to be left out, and if any new allegations against Judge Kavanaugh were to emerge, these also wouldn’t be investigated.

President Trump told reporters Monday: “The FBI should interview anybody that they want within reason, but you have to say within reason.” That qualification is crucial. It is clear that Judge Kavanaugh’s opponents are clamoring for an open-ended fishing expedition that, probably by design, would go on much longer than a week. They are insisting that the FBI investigate Judge Kavanaugh’s drinking while in high school and college and interview anyone who might know about it. Two such people have already come forward, and there are no disincentives for new claimants, possibly driven by partisan or personal animus, to emerge.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) tried to justify his demand to broaden the FBI investigation by claiming that heavy drinking was “directly relevant” to the sexual-assault allegations. If this approach were adopted, the FBI would have to interview a very large pool of witnesses about Judge Kavanaugh’s alcohol intake, and possibly many other personal traits, over many years. Never mind that alcohol use is a standard FBI question, certainly asked in the course of Judge Kavanaugh’s previous six background investigations. CONTINUE AT SITE

Why There’s A Good Case For Sanctioning Christine Blasey Ford’s Lawyers Did Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers deprive her of the opportunity to make an informed decision about whether to accept the committee’s offer to interview her in California? Michael Ginsberg

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/01/theres-good-case-sanctioning-christine-blasey-fords-lawyers/

Like most professions, lawyers have codes of professional responsibility under which they operate. In the case of Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford’s counsel may well have violated them.

It has been widely reported that the Senate Judiciary Committee offered to send investigators to California to speak with Ford. Ford did not accept this offer. In addition, Ford reportedly was unable to attend a hearing set for Sept. 24 because she is afraid of flying and could not otherwise get to Washington by that date. The committee agreed to delay its hearing to Sept. 27.

Yet in her testimony, Ford stated it was not clear to her that the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) had offered to take her statements and testimony in California to prevent her from having to fly. Ford testified she would have accepted the offer had she known about it.

Indeed, she testified to Chairman Chuck Grassley, “If you were gonna come out to see me I would have happily hosted you and would have been happy to speak to you out there. It wasn’t clear to me that that was the case.” Ford also testified, “I was hoping that they would come to me [in California] but I realized that was an unrealistic request.” Not only was it not unrealistic, the offer was on the table.

Here I’ll assume Ford testified truthfully that she was not clear about the Judiciary Committee’s offer. (The alternative raises its own issues.) If Ford’s attorneys did not inform her clearly of the SJC’s offer, the Judiciary Committee could file a grievance against Ford’s attorneys, Debra Katz and Michael Bromwich, with the DC Bar. It would be even worse if they withheld this information from Ford because they were interested in a delay of the hearing for reasons other than their client’s interests.

Lawyers have obligations to their clients and to the tribunals before which they practice. In this case, the client is Ford, and the tribunal is the SJC.

DC Bar Rule 1.4(b), “Communication,” provides that “A lawyer shall explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation.” Did Ford’s lawyers withhold from her the SJC’s offer to take her statement in California? Or did they fail to make clear to Ford what the SJC had offered?

James Comey’s forked tongue goes into overdrive By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/james_comeys_forked_tongue_goes_into_overdrive_on_kavanaugh.html

With the Russia collusion issue falling apart and winding down, fired former FBI director James Comey is now speaking out against the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh through the New York Times’ editorial page. Characteristic for him, he’s speaking with a forked tongue, playing Mister Probity to disguise his real aim of undercutting President Trump.

It’s obnoxious stuff, given that it involves piling on against Kavanaugh, but hey, anything to Get Trump and return from the wilderness of irrelevance.

Comey starts with this supposedly innocuous opener before showing his hand.

The F.B.I. is back in the middle of it. When we were handed the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2015, the bureau’s deputy director said to me, “You know you are totally screwed, right?” He meant that, in a viciously polarized political environment, one side was sure to be furious with the outcome. Sure enough, I saw a tweet declaring me “a political hack,” although the author added, tongue in cheek: “I just can’t figure out which side.”

And those were the good old days. President Trump’s decision to order a one-week investigation into sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, comes in a time of almost indescribable pain and anger, lies and attacks.

Here’s Comey, trying to make you think he’s Mr. Objectivity with one hand and pulling a fast one for the lefties with the other.

In other words, he would have you think the FBI is this objective outfit, just looking for the facts, ma’am, even after the amazing revelations of the Comey bureau’s Deep State politicking.

Then we get right down to his real complaint:

We live in a world where the president routinely attacks the F.B.I. because he fears its work. He calls for his enemies to be prosecuted and his friends freed. We also live in a world where a sitting federal judge channels the president by shouting attacks at the Senate committee considering his nomination and demanding to know if a respected senator has ever passed out from drinking.

American Bar Association Backs Kavanaugh Despite Previous Letter to the Contrary By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/american-bar-association-backs-kavanaugh-despite-previous-letter-to-the-contrary/

The American Bar Association (ABA) has clarified its position regarding the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, explaining in a Friday letter that a previous letter urging the Senate to delay his confirmation had not been reviewed by the relevant committee prior to its release.

The chairman for the American Bar Association Standing Committee, the body tasked with evaluating the qualifications of judges, said in the letter that he was not given an opportunity to review a letter sent by the ABA president Thursday urging that the confirmation be delayed.

“The Committee conducts non-partisan, non-ideological, and confidential peer review of federal judicial nominees. The ABA’s rating for Judge Kavanaugh is not affected by Mr. [Robert] Carlson’s letter,”committee chairman Paul Mosley wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Carlson’s letter, sent Thursday evening following the testimony of Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford, seemed to reverse the ABA’s previous endorsement of the confirmation, instead calling for a delay until the FBI investigated the allegations of sexual assault.