United Nations

Ethics Quote of the Week (On That Fanciful “International Law” Thingy): Konstantin Klein

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“All the bleating about “international law” shows just how completely deluded some of our elites have become. International law was a pleasant fiction that lasted for a few decades…It was never real. Laws are based on submission to an overarching authority backed by force. There is no such international authority and even if you view the UN as one, it does not have the ability to use force against those who violate “international law”…

—Someone named Konstantin Klein on Twitter/”X.” I have no idea who the hell he is, and I could have just as easily said that myself, but I’ve been waiting for someone else to point exactly this out, because it is true..

As a general rule, those criticizing the U.S. action in Venezuela based on “international law” don’t know what international law is, and those who criticize the seizing of Maduro and his wife who do know what international law is are deliberately misleading those who don’t. Why hasn’t the new media clarified the issue? Well, 1) it would undermine the Axis’s anti-Trump narrative and 2) most journalists are lazy and not too bright.

On The View yesterday, Sunny Hostin, who appeals to her own authority frequently because she is a lawyer and was once a prosecutor, again proved she was an affirmative action botch by her law school (Notre Dame) by showing beyond a reasonable doubt that she’s an idiot. According to her, the Trump administration arresting Maduro and extraditing him the United States was a “kidnapping,” “100 percent Illegal,” and akin to “piracy.” Piracy? Then she played the frayed international law card, babbling “And international law doesn’t allow it unless there is — unless Congress declares war, and Congress did not do at. So, this country was founded on the premise of the balance of power. Right? So, you have a checks and balances. So, you have co-equal powers — co-equal branches of power. So, you have the Judicial Branch and then you have the Executive Branch, which the president is a part of, and then you have, of course, the Legislative Branch and that’s Congress. And they are supposed to check each other!”

Psst, Sunny! International law doesn’t “allow” or disallow anything. The United States was actually founded on the premise that the people who lived here wanted to decide on and enforce their own laws and not be subject to foreign rule.

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The United Nations, and the U.S. for Supporting Such an Unethical Organization

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

If you thought U.N. staff in Gaza assisting in the Hamas terror attack wasn’t a sufficient sign of ethics rot, how about this: Abdulaziz Alwasil, Saudi Arabia’s envoy to the UN, was elected as chair of the….wait for it!— Commission on the Status of Women. He ran unopposed at the group’s annual meeting in New York this week. None of the 45 members present at the meeting dissented when the representative of that paragon of women’s rights and feminism—you can see typical happy, liberated Saudi women enjoying their status in the enlightened nation above—was elevated to the two year post. The U.S. is not a member; it just hosts the meeting and pays for the lion’s share of all U.N. activities.

Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Czech Defense Minister Jana Černochová

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The United Nations General Assembly voted on a non-binding resolution calling for an immediate “humanitarian truce” in Gaza. 120 countries voted for the measure, with 45 abstaining. Only14 nations voted against it: Israel, the US, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Fiji, Guatemala, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay and Tonga. Eight EU members supported the cease-fire, including Belgium, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain.

The vote was not surprising, but disgraceful nonetheless. One might think that Belgium, France, Luxembourg, which suffered so at the hands of the Nazis, might have a greater appreciation for the need to take a strong stand against evil-doers, but no. The UK, disgustingly, abstained, but anti-Semitism is popular there.

Of course, a cease fire or truce simply means that Hamas and Iran advance the ball a little further up the field, with a touchdown meaning the eradication of Israel. Those 120 countries know it, too, or should, especially since the resolution didn’t even bother to condemn the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, or to call for the release of the 230 hostages the Hamas took captive on that day.

“One must not stand silent in the face of a second Holocaust,” the Czech Defense Minister Jana Černochová said, calling on her country to withdraw from the United Nations in protest. “The Holocaust is back, and we must not be silent again.”

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The United Nations

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

In a March report, three United Nations entities, the International Committee of Jurists (ICJ), UNAIDS and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated,

“Sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. The enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them. Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy, persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity, and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees.”

The United Nations is deliberately endorsing the rationalizations used by every teacher that seduces a student, every sexual predator who rapes a boy, every religious cultist who takes a child bride, and every father who has incestuous relations with his teenage daughter. As with workplace sexual harassment,the only ethical system that works to prevent child sexual abuse is absolutism. That means no exceptions. An adult’s superior power and presumed authority must be presumed to render consent from a child under the age of 18 invalid. The “Love is Love” platitudes are simply slippery slopes to rampant molestation. This isn’t an issue that can be decided on a case by case basis.

Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Latest Admittees To The “Do Something!” Hall Of Fame”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I am pretty sure that I have neglected to post a fair share of Paul W. Schlecht’s deserving and entertaining commentaries as Comments of the Day; he deserves better. He has a unique style, often sliding into satirical rants. In the case of the UN’s climate change propaganda arm, however, his tone is not only appropriate, it’s welcome and necessary.

Here is Paul’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Latest Admittees to the ‘Do Something!’ Hall Of Fame.” Incidentally, I hope Paul forgives me for substituting “fuck” for “F***K, but I hate all of the “polite” ways of writing and saying that word, since they all mean the same thing.

***

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific and intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations, set up at the request of member governments, dedicated to the task of providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change and its political and economic impacts.”

An absolute epitome of grift/graft, the UNIPCC conducts no research of its own, which should come as no surprise. Follow the money; it’s not in the research, it’s in the solutions recommended by the Summary for Policy-Makers (SPM) addendum to its Assessment Reports (AR’s).

While this may come as something of a surprise, the “solutions” quite often benefit financially those who propose them. Anyone wondering why the UNIPCC has fought reform and scrutiny, wonder no more.

The UNIPCC answers to no one, has no obligation to give an audience to anyone who doesn’t confirm the “Consensus” and has NO Conflict-Of-Interest (COI) provision.

A while back, an INTERACADEMY COUNCIL investigation recommended sweeping changes to the UNIPCC.

“*(T)he council said (thatthe UNIPCC) needs a full-time executive director, more openness and regular changes in leadership. It called for stronger enforcement of its reviews of research and adoption of a COI policy, which the IPCC does not have, even though its parent agencies do.” The COI issue was raised because of former Chair Rajendra Pachauri’s work as adviser and board member of green energy companies, etc., etc., etc.

The UNIPCC’s response? “FUCK OFF!!…a somewhat more direct iteration of “BITE ME!”

Continue reading →

Latest Admittees To The “Do Something!” Hall Of Fame

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

The consistently ridiculous U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared last week that the world has just ten years to reduce “global emissions” beyond what any reasonable or politically viable measures can accomplish, and if it doesn’t, heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by century’s end. Or maybe not. The IPCC is not at all embarrassed about all the other supposed deadlines politicized climate change “experts” have confidently predicted and that it has relayed with absurd certainty. It doubtless will spit out yet another doomsday prediction after this one has passed. (That U.N. warning on the right dates from 1989. The deadline: 2000.)

As plenty of rational, honest scientist have pointed out, “the world” is nowhere close to ready to dump fossil fuels. Alternative technologies and energy sources have not shown that they can achieves what the slick TV commercials claim and promise. All of the targets, some of them supposedly mandatory, established by national and state governments are cynical, manipulative grandstanding. The useless U.N., as is its wont, is aspiring to world dominance and influence it does not have and (I hope) never achieves.

If you have no options, a wise man once said, you have no problem, but the theoretical climate change Sword of Damocles has been a useful device for unethical politicians–incompetent, irresponsible, dishonest—to attract public support through demagoguery. Spurred on by the U.N. jeremiad, two New York Times readers nicely illustrated this bizarre phenomenon in heartfelt letters to the Times editors:

Continue reading →

The Unethical Fake Country Of “The United States of Kailasa”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I sure wonder why the United States continues to prop up the United Nations, which, among its many other recent failures, did nothing to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The United States is still by far the largest donor to the U.N., contributing more than $12 billion in 2021, almost one-fifth of the generally anti-American organization’s budget. President Trump, you may recall, tried to cut funding, but that’s because he was a bigot and a xenophobe in Putin’s pocket.

No, that’s not a digression: the United Nations is so incompetent that it allowed a fake nation to attend two of its meetings recently. Above is Vijayapriya Nithyananda, who said she was representing Kailasa as its “permanent ambassador” to the UN at one of those meetings. There is no “Kailasa,” though it has a website. Does that make it a “virtual nation”? I don’t know and don’t care. The site claims that Kailasa includes “two billion practicing Hindus” among its population, and that it has a flag, a constitution, a central bank, and passports.

Come to think of it, Kailasa would probably be a better U.N. member than Iran, among others.

Continue reading →

The Great Stupid, Global Edition: Ethics Observations On The New U.N. Climate Change Fund

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I’ve let Major Clipton (from the Ethics Alarms TV and Movie Clips collection, #9 of 27) make the first observation, which is that this is nuts, and that it ought to be obvious to everyone that it’s nuts.

In case you missed it, ” Nearly200 countries concluded two weeks of talks early Sunday in which their main achievement was agreeing to establish a fund that would help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the pollution spewed by wealthy nations that is dangerously heating the planet,” according to the New York Times.

The United States has reportedly “agreed” to contribute a billion dollars to the fund. Well…

1. The U.S. diplomats can’t “agree” to give away a billion dollars. Only Congress can do that. If you want a single reason to be glad the Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives while falling on their collective, incompetent faces during the “pink ripple,” this is it. If…and it’s a big if…the new Speaker of the House can keep his troops in line, the U.N.’s Robin Hood Fund should be DOA.

2. The Biden Administration has exploded the National Debt like no other peacetime administration in history, and seems to be under the mistaken belief that taxpayer funds are just cryptocurrency—you, know funny money. The bigger the debt the more interest the U.S. pays on it, and the same regime that has exploded the debt has also created inflation that makes the debt more expensive. In fiscal 2022 alone, the federal government made $475 billion in net interest payments. It was “only” $352 billion the prior year, according to the US Treasury Department. That is more than the government spent on veterans’ benefits and transportation combined. But hey, why not just give away a billion dollars that will be mostly used to line the pockets of the corrupt and incompetent leaders of those “poor, vulnerable countries.”

Continue reading →

A Jumbo For The United Nations!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“War? What war?”

The United Nations’ Department of Global Communications sent an email instructing its staff  not to the war currently raging in Ukraine as the result of Putin’s illegal and murderous armed invasion as either a war or an invasion.

Instead, they were told to use the descriptions “big misunderstanding” or “rod trip gone horribly wrong.” Okay, that’s not true. But the first part is.

Like Jimmy Durante in the Broadway musical “Jumbo,” whose answer to a sheriff confronting him trying to sneak out of a circus with biggest elephant in the world on the end of his rope with the question, “Where do you think you’re going with that elephant?” and replied, “Elephant? What elephant?,” the United Nations has scaled the heights of audacious dishonesty. Jimmy’s line, however, was a joke. The U.N.’s version is a self-indictment. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/24/2021: Morning’s Not The Only Thing That’s Broken…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

On October 24, 1945, the United Nations Charter became effective, marking this date as the international organization’s official birthday. What a disappointment the U.N. has been! The idea of a body made up of representatives of the nations of the world dedicated to promoting peace and mutual cooperation for the good of humanity was always a quixotic and probably doomed mission, one shared by the U.N.’s ill-conceived predecessor, Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations.

I am old enough, however, to remember when the American public believed in and respected the U.N. Its meetings were broadcast regularly by PBS; the U.N’s second Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was one of the world’s most admired men, and the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (ironically, since his father had effectively killed the League of Nations by blocking the U.S.’s membership in the new body in the Senate), was immensely popular. The U.N. has had its moments, notably during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, but it squandered the public’s trust with outrageous committee appointments, placing brazen human rights violators on its Human Rights Council for example (currently Russia, China and Cuba are members), persistent efforts at world government, which is and should always be an offense to the U.S. Constitution, and corruption at the highest levels that have become impossible to excuse. Today the United Nations’ existence is largely symbolic. Maybe that’s enough to justify the expense, but we once thought the United Nations would be so much more.

1. Searching for an ethical news aggregator...but I can’t find one. I visited the Drudge Report for the first time in months, and saw this link: FACEBOOK Faulted by Staff Over Insurrection…

Drudge has been abandoned by many conservatives over the site’s decision to spin anti-Trump, but continuing to call the January 6 riot an “insurrection” after the FBI’s report conclusively showed it wasn’t one is signature significance for a propaganda site. Over at the aggregator that has snatched away Drudge’s Trump-supporting audience, Citizen Free Press, the coverage of the unfolding Alec Baldwin gunfire accident includes this headline: “PHOTOS — This is the woman Alec Baldwin put in charge of firearms for his low budget film…” and this image of the film’s armorist:

shooting armorist

Oh, I see! Based on her looks, we know she must have been incompetent! This is nothing but bigotry, and it is why so many people detest conservatives.

2. Until more people show some courage and principles, this kind of thing will only become more frequent and get worse. Witness the revolting development from Coastal Carolina University. The College Fix reports:

“On September 16, students filed into a classroom, and some students noted the names of several students of color were written on a whiteboard at the front of the class. Thinking this was some sort of list singling out minority students, the offended students planned a campus protest on September 21 instead of going to class.But the names were actually part of a list of students who may want to hang out together, drawn up by a visiting artist who had been counseling two students of color after the previous class. One of the students had said she felt isolated and wanted to get to know other minority students in the theater department, so the group brainstormed a list of potential friends. The school later admitted the list was “a resource for newer students who are looking to be in community with other BIPOC students.”

Never mind; Facts Don’t Matter! The school apologized to the mistakenly offended students with a statement that “faculty and students involved as well as the Theatre Department as a whole are deeply sorry to anyone who was affected by this incident.” That’s right: the school apologized to the students for the students leaping to conclusions and protesting before they knew what they were protesting about. Not only that, the visiting artist who created the list to help the minority students also apologized, calling her actions “thoughtless and careless.” Yes, it is certainly careless to assume that students in the era of The Great Stupid will be capable of being fair, responsible, and reasonable when they have unlimited power to make administrators and instructors lick their metaphorical boots on a whim.

Continue reading →