Lord Monckton believes that if Obama can’t get the Senate to ratify the Copenhagen treaty, he will try an end run around the Senate
Louis P Sheldon
President Barack Hussein Obama is attending a United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen on December 9. He is expected to sign a new Kyoto-type treaty with the U.N. that places the U.S. economy effectively under the control of United Nations bureaucrats. The treaty, however, must be ratified by the U.S. Senate before it becomes official.
British Lord Christopher Monckton, Margaret Thatcher’s former science advisor, has studied the Copenhagen climate change treaty and says it’s a blueprint for one-world government.
Lord Monckton was on Glenn Beck’s radio program to discuss the Copenhagen treaty and the danger it poses to United States sovereignty. He is considered the “Anti Al Gore” and publishes numerous materials debunking Gore’s Chicken Little ideas about the climate. (Listen here: Part 1; Part 2.)
According to Monckton, the Copenhagen treaty to be signed by Obama, “be a new, vast, interlocking, bureaucratic entity created at huge expense to you and me, and that bureaucratic entity will have three purposes, the first of which is twice stated to be government.”
The second purpose of the treaty involves the vast transfer of American wealth to Third World nations for what is called “climate debt.” America will be forced to pay up to 2% of our Gross National Product to Third World nations for allegedly having ruined the climate.
A third purpose of the treaty is “enforcement” of the confiscation of American tax dollars and of domestic policies impacting the environment.
Lord Monckton notes that the treaty sets up a series of “interlocking, technical panels that will have the right directly to intervene in the economies and the environments of individual countries over the heads of their elected governments.”
Lord Monckton put it bluntly: The Copenhagen treaty is a blueprint for a fledgling communist world government!
One of the original creators of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is Canadian Morris Strong, who has been a long-time advocate of a one-world government.
Senate Can Block This Treaty
Lord Monckton believes that if Obama can’t get the Senate to ratify the Copenhagen treaty, he will try an end run around the Senate and push for legislation to implement the treaty by a simple majority in the House and Senate. This would enact the treaty as domestic law, which could later be repealed.
The Constitution gives the Senate the power to ratify treaties, but according to Thomas Jefferson, “In giving to the President and Senate a power to make treaties, the Constitution meant only to authorize them to carry into effect, by way of treaty, any powers they might constitutionally exercise.” (The Anas, 1793, ME 1:408).
Jefferson also noted: “I say... to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty-making power as boundless: If it is, then we have no Constitution. If it has bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which that instrument gives.” --Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1803. ME 10:419
The President and the Senate can only support treaties that are within the bounds of what the Constitution states are the rights of the President and Senate. They cannot legally enact a treaty that violates the Constitution or our Republican form of government by handing sovereignty over to a group of United Nations technical panels.
The emails show a disturbing pattern among the climate change scientists.
Andrea Lafferty
Environmentalist alarmist Al Gore must be losing sleep over the recent exposure of private emails between “climate change” scientists. On the other hand, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is undoubtedly rejoicing that these emails show that the climate change scientists to be suppressing the facts about climate change, faking data, and suppressing opposing viewpoints.
Inhofe has been universally ridiculed for being a skeptic of the Chicken Little claims of Al Gore and his minions at the United Nations. The damning emails from puffed up climate scientists show that Inhofe is right to be skeptical and that the Al Gore clones are both arrogant and vicious. They are willing to hide data that doesn’t fit their climate change political ideology.
The emails in question were hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit in Britain. Thousands of these emails, as well as climate change documents, were posted on the internet for all the world to review.
Many of the climate change scientists in this scandal provide data to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, (IPCC) which is working to establish a one-world government to control all of the nation’s economies. The IPCC is dominated by liberal politicians, not legitimate scientists.
In fact, President Obama is traveling to Copenhagen on December 9, to participate in yet another U.N. climate change conference. The goal of this conference is to enact a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Accord and to set up a world governing body that will effectively control the economies of all nations that are part of the treaty. (More on the Copenhagen treaty is dealt with in a separate article.)
Fake Data – Suppress The Truth
The emails show a disturbing pattern among the climate change scientists. They reveal that these individuals are all pushing a “unified” view of alleged “man-made” climate change; they advise each other on how to fake data to protect the “man-made” climate change hypothesis; they discuss ways to keep opposing viewpoints out of peer-reviewed journals; and they teach each other how to “hide the decline” in global temperatures to maintain the “global warming” hysteria.
We are reprinting a sampling of the climate scientist’s emails here:
“The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind." – Email from Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. (The “MMs” refers to two Canadian scientists who have attempted to get raw data and codes used in climate change graphs.)
“The FOI [Freedom of Information] line we're all using is this: ‘IPCC is exempt from any countries FOI’—the skeptics have been told this. Even though we . . . possibly hold relevant info the IPCC is not part of our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we don't have an obligation to pass it on.” – Jones to Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
"I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal," Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal." – Email from Pennsylvania State University Professor Michael Mann. (Mann is discussing a boycott of “Climate Research” because the journal publishes articles by skeptics of global warming and alleged man-made climate change.
"I'm sure you are aware that McIntyre and his ilk realize they no longer need to get their crap published in legitimate journals [you know, the one's they're cycling!] but all they have to do is put it up on their blog and the contrarian noise machine kicks into gear. Pretty soon Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck and their ilk are parroting the claims." – Email from Michael Mann about climate change skeptic Canadian scientist Steven McIntyre.
"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report...Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is." -- Email from Phil Jones describing how he will censor any opposing viewpoints being expressed in the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change.
"The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it's a travesty that we can't." – Email from Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
"I have just completed Mike's nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years to hide the decline. [in global temperatures]” – Phil Jones
Senator James Inhofe’s skepticism has been proven right by these emails – and they prove that climate scientists have been involved for years in outright fraud.
Senator Inhofe, who serves on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, grilled Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the EPA on the incriminating emails from these climate change scientists at a hearing on December 2. He and Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) respectfully questioned Jackson and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) about the emails and what they are going to do about this scandal.
TVC Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon attended the hearing. He noted: “Senators Inhofe and Bond tried to get Boxer and Jackson to express some sort of concern over this major climate change scandal, but neither one of them would commit to doing anything about them. Inhofe and Bond challenged them to avoid sweeping this scandal under the rug. Boxer, however, got so disgusted that she left the committee room. These emails clearly show that global warming is a deception! Climate change has occurred throughout human history and no one really knows why.”
There are commonsense things that can be done to lower our use of energy such as using energy efficient products, but these climate change extremists have distorted “stewardship” to make it fit their radical agenda.
These are just a few of the 3,000+ emails that go back at least 10 years. The pattern is clear: Hide the facts; suppress the skeptics’ writings; and skew the data to fit a pre-conceived political viewpoint.
Remembering The Past
Al Gore and his acolytes constantly tell the American people that the “debate is over” on global warming and that the scientists have reached a “consensus” on this issue. Anyone opposing crackpot environmental hysteria is labeled a “climate change denier” – putting them in the same category as Nazi Holocaust deniers.
Until a year or so ago, Chicken Little’s were using the term “global warming” to describe the alleged worldwide catastrophe facing us. Now, the term is “climate change,” which can mean either warming or cooling. In fact, for eight straight years, there has been a global cooling trend – something that flies in the face of the global warming/climate change claims. The extremists want to have wiggle room to change the terminology at will to suit their globalist objectives.
In the early 1970s, hysterical environmental scientists and activists were screaming about a coming ice age! Back then, there was “consensus” that the world was headed inevitably toward freezing temperatures and millions of deaths worldwide.
Weather Channel founder John Coleman has repeatedly criticized Al Gore and the global warming crowd over their use of seriously flawed data. In January, 2009 Coleman stated: “I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it [the claim that carbon dioxide causes global warming]. He continued: “Global warming. It is a hoax. It is bad science. It is a high jacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history.”
The climate change emails confirm this to be a fact!
Christopher Horner, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide To Global Warming And Environmentalism, points out that in 1975, Newsweek magazine was claiming: “There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth.” It claimed that global cooling would reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.
John Holdren, who is President Obama’s science advisor, was a global cooling partisan in 1971. In an essay published in Global Ecology: Readings Toward A Rational Strategy For Man, Holdren claimed that the world was facing a “new ice age” caused by human activity (air pollution, dust from farming, jet exhaust, and desertification).
After being 100% wrong in 1971, Holdren is now a global warming zealot who helped create the graphs and charts for Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
In fact, as Christopher Horner notes, periods of global warming throughout history have actually benefitted mankind. Why? Because warming trends in northern parts of the world make for longer growing seasons. Milder climates make life more sustainable.
The Goal Is World Government
Christopher Horner points out in his book that Communists and Socialists have found a home in the environmental movement. In fact, they run it. They’re called “watermelons” – green on the outside and red on the inside.
The “watermelons” use global warming, global cooling, or whatever environmental crisis they can manufacture, to push for a one-world government. This is now known as “global governance.”
Every environmental crisis is laid at the feet of capitalism, which generates wealth, energy, and “greenhouse gases.”
The watermelons seek to destroy capitalism by burdensome world taxes as well as by drastic environmental restrictions on the American economy.
Among those advocating a world government to control all economies is the “Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists,” a leftist group. A recent article on this group’s web site lays out the need for a global government to deal with climate change! The reasoning goes this way: Climate change is a worldwide problem that can only be handled by an “international body” that has the power to impose its will on all nations.
The ultimate goal of the watermelons is to destroy American sovereignty by placing our economy under the control of a United Nations environmental panel. The Copenhagen treaty (Kyoto 2) is designed to do this.
Maurice Strong, the primary architect of the Kyoto climate treaty has stated: “We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”
Clearly, the watermelons desire the collapse of industrial civilization and the end of national sovereignty for America. The Copenhagen treaty is one step toward that goal.
Clearly, the purpose of this U.N. Defamation of Religions resolution is to set a precedent for persecuting and prosecuting anyone who openly criticizes Islam, Muslims, or Shariah Law.
Louis P Sheldon
The Obama Administration has joined hands with Egypt to push through a United Nations Resolution that will forbid “defaming” religions worldwide. The resolution is being presented as an effort to protect “freedom of opinion and expression” but it actually an Islamist strategy to criminalize any criticism of Islam.
A hearing on defamation of religions was conducted by the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the House of Representatives this fall. A representative from TVC was present at this 3-hour hearing.
Witnesses at this hearing included Leonard Leo, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International and Religious Freedom, Angela Wu, the International Law Director for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Tad Stanke, Director of Policy and Programs, Human Rights First and Zainab Al-Suwaij, Executive Director of the American Islamic Congress.
Leonard Leo, expressed the following concerns about the “defamations of religions” resolution at the hearing:
While they may sound tolerant and progressive, these resolutions do not solve the very real problems of persecution and discrimination suffered by the adherents of many religions around the world. Rather, they exacerbate these problems.
The “defamation of religions” concept promotes intolerance and human rights violations, creating wide latitude for governments to restrict free expression and religious freedom. In addition, the concept deviates sharply from the historically rooted object of international human rights protections by addressing the interests of religious institutions and interpretations, rather than the rights of individuals.
The U.N. Human Rights Council, which is overseeing passage of this resolution, is dominated by Marxist and Islamic nations. Among these nations are China, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba. These nations routinely violate the human rights of their citizens by killing, beheading, enslaving or imprisoning them. “This council is a grim joke,” said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. “This group of Communist and Islamic tyrants are sitting in judgment of what the United States or Israel does – and now the Obama Administration has joined with Islamists to violate the First Amendment to our Constitution.”
The resolution begins with a positive statement about the importance of “the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression” and condemns the violations of free expression occurring against journalists and other media workers.
It then states:
… its concern that incidents of racial and religious intolerance, discrimination and related violence, as well as of negative racial and religious stereotyping continue to rise around the world, and condemns, in this context, any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, and urges States to take effective measures, consistent with their obligations under international human rights law, to address and combat such incidents.
This statement will be used by Islamists to stifle criticism of Islam. An Islamist can claim that criticism of Islamic terrorism creates hatred and is an incitement to discrimination against Muslims. Christians or Jews speaking about against Islam will be considered criminals.
The resolution then calls upon nations to:
To take all necessary measures to put an end to violations of these rights and to create the conditions to prevent such violations, including by ensuring that relevant national legislation complies with their international human rights obligations and is effectively implemented;
This section asks governments to create legislation that will conform to the U.N. resolution on defamation of religions.
To ensure that victims of violations of these rights have an effective remedy, to investigate effectively threats and acts of violence, including terrorist acts, against journalists, including in situations of armed conflict, and to bring to justice those responsible in order to combat impunity.
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To promote a pluralistic approach to information and multiple points of view by encouraging a diversity of ownership of media and of sources of information, including mass media, through, inter alia, transparent licensing systems and effective regulations on undue concentration of ownership of the media in the private sector;
This section is the international version of the liberal “fairness doctrine” that the Obama Administration wants to revive. The Federal Communications Commission, headed by Mark Lloyd, an admirer of Hugo Chavez’s treatment of the media, will spearhead this effort to force conservatives off the airwaves.
To review their procedures, practices and legislation, as necessary, with a view to ensure the full and effective implementation of all their obligations under international human rights law, including to ensure that any limitations on the right to freedom of opinion and expression are only such as are provided by law and are necessary for the respect of the rights and reputations of others, or for the protection of national security or of public order (ordrepublic) or of public health or morals;
This section is clearly designed to kill freedom of speech in democratic nations. Governments are encouraged to control criticism against religion (meaning Islam) in order to “respect the rights and reputations of others” and can be used to protect national security, public order, public health or morals. This would give governments wide-sweeping powers to control the content of all media that criticizes Islam in any way.
To refrain from using counter-terrorism as a pretext to restrict the right to freedom of opinion and expression in ways that are contrary to their obligations under international law.
This anti-free speech resolution has been pushed by Islamic nations for years. It was first introduced by Pakistan in 1999 on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Conference under a “racist” agenda in the U.N. In the original version it was titled “Defamation of Islam.”
The focus was changed to “defamation of religions” after the Islamic attack on our nation on September 11, 2001.
Steve Groves with the Heritage Foundation is concerned about the U.S. co-sponsoring this resolution with Egypt. “The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects free speech and expression, even when speech is offensive or insulting. Moreover, a religious ‘speech code’ would disrupt the assimilation of religious minorities that has occurred throughout U.S. history and could breed resentment rather than understanding among America's religious communities.”
If the U.S. backs a resolution that urges the suppression of some speech, presumably we are taking the view that all countries – including the U.S. – should adhere to this resolution.
If we are constitutionally barred from adhering to it by our domestic constitution, then we're implicitly criticizing that constitution, and committing ourselves to do what we can to change it.
"[The Obama Administration] presumably be committed to filing amicus briefs supporting changes in First Amendment law to allow such punishment, and in principle perhaps the appointment of justices who would endorse such changes (or even the proposal of express constitutional amendments that would work such changes).
I’m worried that it might be a step backward for our own constitutional rights, because of what seems to be the U.S. endorsement of the suppression of “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence” and possibly of “negative stereotyping of religions and racial groups.”
Advocacy of mere hostility – for instance advocacy that people should hate and be hostile to radical strains of Islam (and its adherents), or to Scientology, or to Catholicism, or to fundamentalist Christianity, or for that matter to religion generally – is clearly constitutionally protected here in the U.S.; but the resolution seems to call for its prohibition.
Beyond that, I’m worried that the executive branch’s endorsement of speech-restrictive “international human rights” norms will affect how the courts interpret the First Amendment, so that over time, an international norm against hate speech ... [would] supply a basis for prohibiting [hate speech], the First Amendment notwithstanding.”
The Becket Fund For Religious Liberty has published a couple of detailed analyses of the “Defamation of Religions” resolution. The Fund concludes that the resolution is a direct assault on our First Amendment freedoms of speech and religion.
Defamation laws are meant to protect individuals from public slander or libel that would negatively affect their livelihood, and is closely aligned with individual and personal, rather than group, rights. The traditional defense in a defamation lawsuit is the truth, as defamation laws are meant to inhibit someone from using mistruths to harm another.
“Defamation of religions” measures, however, are used to protect a set of beliefs, ideas, and philosophies. Yet religions make conflicting truth claims and indeed the diversity of truth claims is something that religious freedom as a concept is designed to protect. Thus, the traditional defense of truth in a defamation suit is subject in a “defamation of religions” case to what ideas, worldviews, or religious beliefs the judging authority believes to be true. The nature of the inquiry is factual.
However, “defamation of religions,” as opposed to the defamation of persons, forcibly requires the state to determine which ideas are acceptable, as opposed to which facts are true. A fundamental rule of law problem presents itself in the notion of “defamation of religion,” as belief cannot be empirically proven true. “Defamation of religions” measures are thus distinct from traditional defamation laws because they do not protect persons, good faith speech, or dissent.
Enforcement of “defamation of religions” measures, including anti-blasphemy and anti- vilification laws, is typically left to the unbridled discretion of local officials who are free to act on their own prejudices. Ultimately, “defamation of religions” measures empower majorities against dissenters and the state against individuals.
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Pakistan, Iran, and Egypt have all expressed strong support for the “defamation of religions” resolutions. Pakistan Penal Code 295 states that defiling Islam or its prophets is deserving of the death penalty; defiling, damaging or desecrating the Qur’an will be punished with life imprisonment; and insulting another’s religious feelings can be punished with 10 years of prison. Anti-blasphemy laws “are often used to intimidate reform-minded Muslims, sectarian opponents, and religious minorities, or to settle personal scores.” In Iran, an academic and member of the pro-reform Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution, was sentenced to death for calling for the reformation of religion in which people should not “blindly follow” religious leaders. In Egypt, a professor at Cairo University was declared an apostate for teaching his students to read certain parts of the Qur’an metaphorically.
Each of these instances required the state to mediate which religious viewpoints were acceptable and which were not. Further, in many instances, enforcement of “defamation of religion” measures requires a judgment based on the subjective sensibilities of the listener rather than the objectively ascertainable speech of the speaker. Under the standards promoted by the “defamation of religion” resolutions, when a Muslim states his belief that Jesus was a prophet, but not God incarnate, such statements could also be considered “defamation” against the Christian faith of many believers. But no OIC member state supporting defamation of religion laws would want to strip Muslims of their right to state this Qur’anic teaching. In such an environment, we effectively abolish the right to disagree over matters of truth, rendering “freedom of belief” a mere illusion.
In order to enforce a defamation of religion suit in the same manner, a judge would first have to recognize that an idea, philosophy, or religion can be defamed in the same way that an individual can be defamed. Human rights law has always intended the protection of individual rights, just as traditional defamation laws have always intended to protect individuals from false claims that cause an undue burden on an individual’s livelihood or reputation.
Second, if a judge were able to accept the initial premise and continued with the case, he would also be forced to make a subjective decision. In order to decide a defamation case, a judge or jury must determine what is true in the case. Thus, if a Muslim were to make the statement that Jesus was only a prophet, would that statement be considered defamatory to Christianity, which claims the Jesus was the Son of God?
In order to rule in that case, the judge would be forced to take sides in a theological debate. When it comes to religion, a judge cannot objectively determine what is true unless the state is willing to make the audacious claim that it has a monopoly on eternal truth. Finally, it is also important to note that defamation laws are not meant to protect individuals from offensive statements that are peaceful in nature. Determining what is and is not offensive also requires a subjective opinion. And as uncomfortable as it may be, there is no such thing as the right not to be offended.
The U.N. Watch organization based in Geneva is also concerned about the resolution to criminalize criticism of Islam. Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch has warned:
The resolutions pose a major threat to the premises and principles of international human rights law and harm Muslims as much as non-Muslims. International law already protects victims of religious discrimination.
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[The latest resolution is] not really trying to protect individuals from harm, [but rather attempting] to shield a set of beliefs from question or debate and to ban any discussion of Islam that may challenge state orthodoxies or offend Islamic sensibilities.
Clearly, the purpose of this U.N. Defamation of Religions resolution is to set a precedent for persecuting and prosecuting anyone who openly criticizes Islam, Muslims, or Shariah Law.
