Tag: un

World’s Worst Polluter, China, Vows Strong Presence at U.N. Climate Alarmism Summit

China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment said on Wednesday that it will send a delegation to the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Turkey in November, to “actively promote the international climate negotiations.”

China is, by far, the worst polluter in the world and it rakes in considerable profits from its near-monopoly on the materials for green energy products like solar panels and electric vehicles (EVs). Yet it presents itself as a humble, concerned citizen of the Earth at conferences like COP31 and the climate movement seems generally inclined to go along with the routine.

“China supports COP31 in prioritizing implementation and addressing both longstanding issues, such as insufficient emissions reductions and inadequate financial support from developed countries, and emerging challenges, including unilateralism and protectionism that undermine collective climate action,” said Vice Minister of Ecology and the Environment Li Gao at a press conference on Wednesday.

Li expressed China’s support for the Paris climate agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and said “progress should also be made on climate finance,” including “in-depth discussions on a roadmap for developed countries to deliver the $300 billion climate finance goal by 2035 and to triple adaptation finance.”

Li also called for “the establishment of international mechanisms for a just transition, helping countries, particularly developing countries, address transition-related challenges and narrow the gap between the Global North and the Global South.”

China is not expected to be paying any of these bills because it does not consider itself to be a “developed country,” even though it is currently the second-largest economy in the world and a voracious consumer of fossil fuel energy.

China postures as a developing nation, as Li said at his press conference, so it would not be on the business end of climate-themed wealth redistribution from the “Global North” to the “Global South.” These are conceptual designations, not statements of geographic reality, so China is not part of the “Global North” even though it also claims to be an Arctic power.

Li made much of China’s surging green energy production, saying China’s solar power capacity exceeded its coal power capacity for the first time this year, and it has become the world’s top producer of EVs. He also boasted that China now leads the world in nuclear power, combining installed capacity with power plants under construction.

Li forgot to mention that China’s coal fired power generation is still increasing, with consumption forecast to increase by over three percent this year. This increase was partly due to reduced shipments of liquified natural gas (LNG) from the Middle East due to the Iran war – and also due to surging demand for electricity to power data centers, EVs, and air conditioning.

In a June 2026 analysis, Reuters noted that China’s “renewable energy” generation did surpass coal power in 2025, but this was partly due to sharply reduced demand in the wake of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

Renewable power construction beat some of China’s early projections for the “transition” to green energy, but actual electricity generation is lagging behind demand, in part due to unpredictable weather fluctuations – poor wind conditions for wind turbines, drought or floods plaguing hydropower plants, and so forth. China still needs fossil fuels – oil, gas, and coal – to meet peak demand, and it is still building new coal-fired power plants.

One of the big concerns among energy analysts is that China might not have enough coal for the winter of 2026, as coal production is down and imports have declined. Demand for coal power rose when LNG imports declined, cleaning out inventories. Production also declined in May due to a major disaster at the Liushyenyu Coal Mine, which killed at least 82 people.

Even with its reduced production and imports over the summer, China remains the world’s largest consumer of coal, accounting for more than half of worldwide demand, and China is still the world’s largest emitter of “greenhouse gases.” According to the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), air pollution causes about two million deaths in China every year.

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Who decides what’s misinformation? U.N. pandemic declaration takes aim at vaccine hesitancy

The United Nations General Assembly appointed itself the global referee on what you can believe about vaccines and pandemics, adopting a sweeping political declaration on October 12 by a 153-3 vote that calls on nations to counter “misinformation” and vaccine hesitancy. However, the United States joined Israel and Argentina in voting no, signaling deep divides over who should call the shots on public health: voters at home or bureaucrats abroad.

The 64-clause, nonbinding document emerged after objections from the Trump administration and a few other governments blocked consensus and forced a vote. The U.S. delegation objected to reproductive health language it said failed to exclude “harmful gender ideology,” which it said undermines parental authority.

The U.S. also balked at the text’s repeated references to equity and its nods to the Pandemic Agreement and International Health Regulations, which the U.S. said would commit countries to agreements they never joined. Italy also challenged wording on disinformation during earlier talks but ultimately voted yes, while New Zealand and Paraguay abstained. Critics warn the declaration sets the stage for expanded surveillance, censorship, and fast-tracked vaccines — all under the guise of global health security.

Critics call the declaration toothless but troubling

The declaration, which David Bell, a public health physician and senior scholar at the Brownstone Institute, dismissed as an empty bureaucratic gesture, still backs the WHO’s controversial Pandemic Agreement and flags a $15 billion annual gap in pandemic preparedness funding. Bell warned that the broader push diverts resources toward “saleable commodities for rare but very profitable international outbreaks.”

Valerie Ferrell, policy director of Stand for Health Freedom, likened the document to an unholy political vow renewal that reaffirms the U.N.’s fondness for “begging for funds, and hunting and killing ‘misinformation’ so people are kept in the dark.”

The U.S. withdrawal from the WHO, ordered by President Trump in January 2025 and effective this year, further underscores the administration’s refusal to hand over public health decisions to international bodies.

Paragraph 57 targets vaccine hesitancy as ‘misinformation’

The most contentious line, paragraph 57, asks member states to counter “health-related misinformation, disinformation, including countering vaccine hesitancy” and to build trust in public health systems. Epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher of the McCullough Foundation said the provision should alarm anyone who values “scientific freedom, informed consent, and the right to question public-health authorities.”

Opponents also bristle at the text’s embrace of “infodemic management” and a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach to pandemics, warning it could bring back the lockdowns, mandates, and censorship seen during COVID.

Pathogen-sharing talks could produce a binding deal

Beyond the nonbinding declaration, an annex on pathogen access and benefit-sharing (PABS) remains the true prize. Under the proposed system, participating nations would hand over pathogen samples and genetic sequences and receive a cut of whatever vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics result. Talks have stalled over intellectual property fights between wealthy and developing nations.

Researcher James Roguski told The Defender that PABS is the “main event.” The Pandemic Agreement can’t open for signature until the annex is complete, and Roguski said talks resume next month. If negotiators strike a deal and the World Health Assembly approves the agreement in May 2027, he said, the next U.S. administration could sign on or rejoin the WHO.

Trust in public health isn’t manufactured by drowning out doubters. It’s earned by telling people the whole truth, side effects and all. And with drugmakers lining up to turn shared pathogen samples into profitable vaccines, everyone at the table seems to have something to sell except the skeptics.

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UN and The Hague Confront Impunity for War Crimes

On October 9th, the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize Was awarded to Navi Pillay, the South African international lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid political prisoners on Robben Island, and went on to serve as a judge on the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court (ICC), then as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2025, Navi Pillay led the UN Commission of Inquiry that confirmed that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

With the world in the grip of seemingly intractable war and chaos, the Nobel Committee clearly wanted to honor someone who has worked against the tide of militarism and violence to uphold international law. And yet, on the same day, the United States unveiled unilateral, illegal coercive measures or “sanctions” against the ICC, where Navi Pillay served as a judge from 2003 to 2008.

The UN General Assembly’s 2026 general debate in September also set out to uphold the UN Charter and international law, and to confront the reality that the UN system is failing in its most basic responsibility, to maintain international peace and security.

The foundational rules of the UN Charter are that countries must resolve disputes peacefully and refrain from the threat or use of force. But in the General Assembly debate, even as leaders recognized the urgent need to finally enforce the UN Charter, after decades of impunity for aggression and war crimes, they were reluctant to explicitly address the central role of the United States in undermining the rule of international law.

Many US allies loyally condemned Russia’s violation of the UN Charter against Ukraine. But none of them even tried to square their singular focus on Russia with the inconvenient truth that their own ally, the United States, has systematically violated the UN Charter for decades, against Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and other countries.

While US allies remain silent, US officials accept no responsibility or accountability for the violence and chaos they unleash, and instead keep doubling down on their failed imperial ambitions and military approach to international disputes, the very antithesis of what the UN Charter requires.

Many other leaders spoke out, but without explicitly naming the United States. Algeria’s foreign minister, the veteran diplomat Ahmed Attaf, pointedly asked,

“What sort of international order can function properly when principles are selected according to the identity of those who violate them? What confidence can remain in international law when the aggressor is granted the right to self-defense, while the victim is required to justify even the right to survive?”

So it is left to the officials of the countries the United States threatens or attacks to remind the world which country is illegally threatening them, as Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian did clearly and accurately at the General Assembly.

Many other leaders made strong statements condemning Israel’s war crimes and genocide in Gaza, even as they neglected to condemn the essential US military and diplomatic role in them. King Abdullah of Jordan described Israel’s objective as “to make a viable Palestinian state impossible,” through “a system of subjugation… de facto annexation… forced displacement… (and) war crimes.”

“We have tools,” he reminded his colleagues, “Sanctions, asset freezes, embargoes, diplomatic isolation. And we have a record of using them elsewhere… The question now is: Will we act?”

Another of the UN’s tools is the power of the president of the UN General Assembly to convene Emergency Special Sessions (ESS) that can pass “uniting for peace” resolutions. This allows the General Assembly to act decisively on international problems when the Security Council fails to do so, wielding the kind of tools that King Abdullah outlined.

The General Assembly’s 10th Emergency Special Session on “Illegal Israeli Actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the Rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory” began in 1997, and has been reconvened more than twenty times.

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China Builds a Parallel Global Governance System Ahead of Xiong’an Forum

China is turning its ambition to displace American leadership into an institutional strategy, building a coalition inside the UN while establishing organizations that could expand Beijing’s influence over international rules, mediation, AI, and data. Its promises of equality and cooperation raise questions about whether these institutions will serve their members or advance CCP interests.

A system that places state sovereignty above individual rights could shield authoritarian governments from international condemnation, while Chinese influence over technology standards could promote surveillance and censorship.

CCP officials have announced that China will host the first Xiong’an Global Governance Forum in Hebei Province this autumn and the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Shenzhen on November 18 and 19. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has listed both events among the next steps for implementing Xi Jinping’s Global Governance Initiative (GGI), Beijing’s plan to change how the world is governed.

Xi announced the initiative on September 1, 2025, at the “Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus” meeting in Tianjin. It followed three earlier Xi frameworks: the Global Development Initiative in 2021, the Global Security Initiative in 2022, and the Global Civilization Initiative in 2023.

These initiatives continue an older CCP ambition. Two decades before the GGI, Hu Jintao called for strengthening global governance as part of building a “harmonious world.”

Wang Yi made the GGI’s target clear when he said “a few countries monopolize global governance” and that this should no longer continue. A concept paper released by the Chinese government on the day of the announcement says the initiative seeks to make existing institutions more responsive to developing countries without overturning the international order or building a framework outside it. Its five core concepts are sovereign equality, international rule of law, multilateralism, a people-centered approach, and “real results.”

The Group of Friends of Global Governance is Beijing’s vehicle for promoting the GGI inside the UN. Nearly 40 founding member states attended its launch meeting in New York on December 9, 2025, chaired by China’s UN ambassador, Fu Cong. The group has since added chapters in Geneva and Vienna. At the group’s May 2026 meeting, Wang Yi proposed nine areas for reforming global governance.

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Deep State of the World

What we’ve heard about so far today — and will continue to hear about — is not a collection of separate problems. It’s all one problem: the deep state of the world is trying to consolidate the entire world into a one-world government and has developed many different mechanisms of control to achieve that end. A major part of that initiative is to cause all our institutions to fail us. 

What you’ve heard about the fundamental problems in education, healthcare, agriculture, government regulation, the news media, censorship, and propaganda is all part of that same agenda, in my view.

And the idea of “Earth System Governance“ has become an academic discipline, albeit hidden from most people.

This agenda came out to the world around 1970 when the Club of Rome published its report, titled Limits to Growth.

The first goal was to create the narrative that climate change, environmental degradation, and resource depletion posed an existential threat to humanity, in order to frighten the public into funding and complying with a new set of priorities.

The second goal was to use international organizations like the UN and WHO to slowly siphon power from individual countries under the guise of environmental protection. The UN has over 30 agencies prepared to step in and impose regulations and taxation on international industries such as shipping, which is actually being done now. The UN even wants to create its own system of law.

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The New World Map the UN Wants You to Use

For more than four centuries, the Mercator projection has shaped one of the world’s most familiar views of the planet.

The icon map was designed to make navigation on the Earth’s oceans easier, but it came with a cost: the farther a place lies from the equator, the more dramatically its size is exaggerated.

On Sept. 4, 2026, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the Equal Earth projection, an equal-area world map published in 2018, and encouraged governments, schools, media, and technology platforms to use it wherever the comparative size of continents matters.

Every flat map has to give something up, and the two below make different trade-offs.

Mercator, on top, keeps compass bearings straight and pays for it in area, stretching land more as it approaches the poles. Equal Earth, beneath it, keeps area exact and lets shapes bend slightly instead. Africa, Canada, and Greenland are highlighted on both so you can see what happens to each when the projection changes.

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UN adds 61 firms to settlements blacklist over alleged human rights violations against Palestinians

The UN human rights office has added 61 more companies to a blacklist of firms that it says are involved in violating Palestinian human rights through business ties to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The vast majority of the total 214 companies, which are based in 11 countries, are Israeli. Five of the 158 companies listed last year were removed in the latest update.

The blacklist, first published in 2020, was born of a vote by the UN’s human rights council, which has no ability to force companies to act. Its main goal is to name and shame businesses with ties to the settlements.

It is unclear how the inclusion on the list has affected the companies financially.

“This report is another reminder to companies that they have human rights responsibilities and are expected to conduct due diligence to ensure that they do not become involved in human rights violations or abuses,” said Volker Türk, the UN human rights chief, in a statement.

Israel said it “categorically rejects” the publication. “This database is meant to serve as a blacklist against businesses that have committed no wrongdoing,” the Israeli diplomatic mission in Geneva said in a statement. “We call on friends not to yield to this ugly attempt to blacklist Israeli firms.”

The UN office said it had advised the companies of their listing and given them a right of reply.

The latest report comes as Israeli settlements in Palestinian areas have faced new scrutiny.

Earlier this month, Britain banned trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, where it says “settler terrorists” are carrying out “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians. France and Canada announced they would take similar action.

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 Actresses Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder Handcuffed While Protesting Netanyahu’s UN Speech

Actresses Hannah Einbinder and Susan Sarandon were taken into custody Thursday outside the United Nations in New York during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the General Assembly.

Jewish Voice for Peace organized the protest, which took place a few blocks from the UN headquarters on Thursday.

Protesters wore matching shirts that read “Fund people not bombs” and carried banners including “Stop Arming Israel” and “End the Genocide.”

Chants captured on video included “Netanyahu, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide,” “Let Gaza live,” and “Stop arming Israel.”

An NYPD spokesperson said Community Affairs officers warned the crowd to leave.

“They continued to block the intersection. Multiple individuals who didn’t comply were taken into custody,” the spokesperson said, without giving a final headcount.

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Despite UN Diplomacy, the US and Iran Are Still Headed Toward More War

Just a few thoughts on the three-hour indirect meeting yesterday at the UN between US and Iranian officials, facilitated by the indefatigable Qataris.

It is undoubtedly a good thing that the two sides have resumed contact again, even though we are now back to Qatari mediators shuttling messages between them rather than the two sides talking directly to each other.

But it is also true that the two sides remain very far from each other. The positive manner in which Trump, in particular, described the meeting, as a result, leaves the impression that this was more performative than substantive. That is, yet another effort to calm the markets and reduce further negative impact on the upcoming elections. Why else would Trump insist that a deal will be reached after the midterms? That specificity gives the game away.

Indeed, part of the calculation on the American side is to make moves now to reduce the likelihood of an Iranian escalation before the midterms. As I have written before, Round 3 of the war is very likely, and from the US standpoint, the preferred timing is after the midterms. But the Iranians are no longer in a reactive mode; if war is coming, they may take preemptive action to deprive Trump of the luxury of choosing the timing of the next round. The most optimal moment to preempt a US attack would be a week or two before the midterms, which is why some limited diplomacy now with the partial aim of reducing the likelihood of such a preemption is deemed useful. And why its achievement is overstated.

To go beyond this, real concessions from both sides are needed. But right now, the key blockage is Trump’s refusal to lift the naval blockade on Iran, even if Tehran agrees to open the Strait of Hormuz. The US side fears that lifting the blockade would enable Iran to refill its coffers and provide it with much more time. Tehran would use this reprieve not to strike a deal with Washington, but to prolong the conflict for teh purpose of destroying Trump’s presidency.

Tehran, in turn, is unlikely to give any concessions of significance unless Trump lifts the blockade. Trump’s refusal to do so is interpreted by the Iranians as a reflection of his desire to overthrow the Islamic Republic or force it to surrender.

To break such a deadlock, small steps like the meeting in New York may prove useful, if not necessary. But thus far, while the resumption of (indirect) talks is a breakthrough of sorts, it is not course correction: The US and Iran are unfortunately still headed toward another round of war.

I am also linking to my conversation with Glenn Diesen from earlier this week. It quickly went to very dark places. But the situation in the Middle East/US/Iran is unravelling, and measures and scenarios that were unthinkable just a few months ago are increasingly being discussed at the government level. So we had to have an honest conversation about these previously unthinkable scenarios.

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UN moves forward with plans to take control of AI globally

Nobody panic. The UN and its vast globalist elite bureaucracy is ready to claim central oversight, control, and administration of future artificial intelligence (“AI”) development to ease worries about the fast-developing science.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the declaration Wednesday, warning world leaders AI poses ‌risks – known and unknown – that cannot be ignored.

The former Portuguese Socialist Prime Minister spoke after pushback from President Donald Trump, who called threats that AI might destroy humanity “a HOAX” and claimed efforts to limit the technology are part of a “SICK conspiracy.”

He and Mark Zuckerberg both argue market pressure, not government mandates and centrally administered bureaucracy, will keep AI developers in line.

Guterres disagrees, embracing political and industry AI controls rather than trusting the marketplace.

Cautioning that “the world cannot afford a race to the bottom on AI safety,” the chief bureaucrat said concerns raised by those on the front lines of AI technology that its development “is racing ahead of our understanding of the risks” can’t be ignored, the Associated Press (“AP”) reports.

Governments must assume their first responsibility to protect civilians from AI threats, which means “national action is essential,” Guterres told UN reporters. “But global coordination is also indispensable.”

“We need guardrails to build trust – and that make AI safe, transparent, accountable, with human dignity at the centre.”

That’s where the UN and its strictures come in, Guterres outlined.

He said AI will be a major topic in his discussions with world leaders at their annual gathering next week for the high-level session of the UN General Assembly.

“The United Nations will continue to explore practical ideas and approaches in the immediate days ahead,” Guterres said, per the AP report.

“We need a shared understanding of how to advance the safe, secure and responsible development of AI – while identifying when increasingly powerful systems may require stronger safeguards, or additional measures to manage potential risks.”

Expect a global UN summit sooner rather than later on AI controls, Guterres said in response to a question asking whether next week’s meeting of top officials from the UN’s 193 member nations wouldn’t be the perfect opportunity for talks on curbing the excesses of AI.

The career bureaucrat said, “I think it makes full sense at the right moment to have a serious international summit on artificial intelligence.” And at a summit, he said, “it is absolutely essential to have everybody on board” – governments, companies, scientists and civil society – “and I hope that this will be possible.”

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