Rule No. 2: There are no other rules.
Today's case in point -
Billions wasted on UN climate programme:
Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme.
Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN's main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.
The criticism centres on the UN's clean development mechanism (CDM), an international system established by the Kyoto process that allows rich countries to meet emissions targets by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.
Actually it's kind of funny. The "rich" countries get scammed twice: once by the global warming foolishness and again by UN-sponsored grifters.
A working paper from two senior Stanford University academics examined more than 3,000 projects applying for or already granted up to $10bn of credits from the UN's CDM funds over the next four years, and concluded that the majority should not be considered for assistance. "They would be built anyway," says David Victor, law professor at the Californian university. "It looks like between one and two thirds of all the total CDM offsets do not represent actual emission cuts."
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"Traders are finding ways of gaining credits that they would never have had before. You will never know accurately, but rich countries are clearly overpaying by a massive amount," said Victor.
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A separate study published this week by US watchdog group International Rivers argues that nearly three quarters of all registered CDM projects were complete at the time of approval, suggesting that CDM money was not needed to finance them.
The UN says they are carefully checking every CDM project and there sure are heap big emissions cuts. Of course, they checked every deal in the Iraq Oil-for-Food program and what they mostly checked was how much money they could stash in their personal bank accounts.
All of which reminds me of the sole piece of serious legislation that Barack Obama has sponsored in the US Senate -
the so-called Global Poverty Act. Now this isn't the usual goofy plan that just sends more cash directly to the Third World Dictator Lifestyle Enhancement Fund. The Global Poverty Act would require the USA to comply with the United Nations Millennium Declaration and give 0.7% of our GDP from 2002 through 2015 to the UN to supposedly reduce global poverty. This is all part of the UN's Millennium Project run by former Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs who reckons that the way to screw the required '$845 billion "over and above what the U.S. already spends"' out of the taxpayers is to put a UN tax on carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Then after the UN handles the cash and subtracts their overhead, they in turn put the remaining loot in the Third World Dictator Lifestyle Enhancement Fund.
Naturally since it's the UN we're talking about, it's interesting to speculate how much of the loot will actually get sidetracked to the UN Kleptocrats Lifestyle Enhancement Fund. After the UN got burned badly over the Iraq Oil for Food scandal they started requiring public financial disclosure from top bureaucrats so maybe now it's all OK? Bwahahaha -
it's a canonical UN farce: (emphasis mine)
Translation: public disclosure at the UN can consist of signing a statement in which the only information imparted to the public is that you refuse to disclose anything except… your refusal to disclose.
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For more detail, Matthew Russell Lee of Inner-City Press has been combing through and among many intriguing discoveries makes the excellent observation that among the 190 UN senior officials urged by Ban to fling themselves under the 10-watt glare of public disclosure described above, less than half were even as forthcoming as, say, Iqbal Riza. They wouldn’t even put their names on the site — or, as Matthew neatly put it, they have “not even consented to disclose their decision to maintain confidentiality.” This group includes — to name just a sampling — UN poverty guru and Under-Secretary-General Jeffrey Sachs; Ban’s special envoy for Burma, Ibrahim Gambari; and UN Controller Warren Sach. Lest we forget, the purpose of this disclosure exercise, as Ban’s spokesperson announced last week, is to show that UN staff members “understand the importance” of assuring the rest of us “that in the discharge of their official duties and responsibilities, UN staff members will not be influenced by any consideration associated with his/her private interests.”
Sure - we believe ya!
There's lot's more wrong with the UN Millenium Declaration including banning "small arms and light weapons" and ratifying the International Criminal Court Treaty and the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty) among others and thereby giving them the force of law in the USA, but the biggest problem has to be that it violates Rule No. 1: Never let the United Nations handle money. However, there actually may now be room for another rule: Never let Barack Obama decide the foreign policy of the United States.
