Gun owners are up in arms over a U.N. conference on small arms that runs through the Fourth of July. Over 100,000 letters have been sent to date to Kofi and gang.

But U.N. officials are protesting, saying they have nothing but the best of intentions:

Mr. Kariyawasam said, “Some members of the U.S. public are totally misinformed. This conference is about illegal weapons.”

Yeah, let’s fall for that one. To the U.N., all guns in the hands of anyone other than their blue-helmeted rapists are illegal. To get an idea of the gun-grabbing loons behind these movements check out this article about the Control Arms Campaign (wouldn’t you know Amnesty International is involved?).

Back to the original article:

The United Nations agreed in 2001 to fight the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons after a divisive battle to define the scope of their efforts. Governments pledged to collect and destroy illegal weapons and tighten legislation to squeeze out illicit importing, exporting and sales.

The effort is restricted to small arms and light weapons — basically, anything that can be fired by a person or transported on the back of a pickup truck.

These people learned from watching the Second Amendment get eroded away over decades. Freedoms are chipped away slowly so people don’t notice.

First they came for my BB gun, and I had outgrown it, so I did not protest. Then they came for my ammunition stores, and I thought “I can buy more as I need it,” so I said nothing. Then . . .

Well, you get the idea.

So far, 50 nations have destroyed excess weapons by burning them in “flames of peace” bonfires or crushing them under massive bulldozers.

Yeah, and how is that working out? Anyone notice the world becoming a safer place? Hear anything from the citizens in Darfor? Rwanda? How about asking the children of Beslan?

Would a U.N. treaty have kept Mao from killing 49 million people? Stalin from purging 13 million? Hitler from murdering six million? Pol Pot and his two million?

Weapons are available to insurgents and tyrants, and they always will be. Hell, Saddam’s kids didn’t even need guns, they just fed people to a plastic shredder.

But that won’t stop the U.N. from trying to take your gun and (more importantly) the guns from your children and grandchildren. So go get an idea of what to write and to whom (or just send the provided form letters — no one at the U.N. is going to read them, we’re just going for volume), and send a letter or three of your own. I’m going to include an email to each of my elected servants to tell them to stop supporting the U.N. It’s time to discard that carcass and form something better.

Then jump over to CNN and vote in the poll. It seems that only 43% of CNN readers know that the U.N.’s ultimate goal will effectively outlaw gun ownership in the U.S. Let’s go set them straight.

Update: Say Uncle notes that one “news” story characterizes the letters as “hate mail“:

Hate mail? Really? Or, you know, concerned folks voicing their opinions.

Exactly.

Technorati Tags: United Nations,
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Fading Freedom.

A new “recommendation” from the UN:

A global effort is needed to tackle rape and other sexual violence in war zones, the United Nations said on Wednesday, calling responses to a worsening problem with tens of thousands of victims “grossly inadequate.”

Ummm . . . how about not sending in your blue helmets to commit rape in many countries, trade food for sex with barely-pubescent girls and run Internet pedophile rings — all of which has been happening for decades.

IO Watch is an organization of dedicated to making “the UN, the UN System, and other international organizations more accountable and subject to — rather than exempt from — international law.” They keep track of the many, many abuses and scandals that take place in the IO world.

Of Interest has posted a report authored by “a concerned group of current and former UN employees” and distributed by IO Watch. A sample:

Hirings and promotions routinely violate UN rules (and are illegal under most national laws) and revolve around patronage and whom one knows rather than professional qualifications. Poorly performing managers are simply moved into different management slots while others are placed in senior positions solely because of their nationality, or because of favors owed to them by their supervisors or colleagues.

Salaries for UN employees are free of taxes and come with six weeks vacation, 11 holidays, 10 sick days that are often used as vacation, plus 4 weeks of “home leave”, rental and housing grants to supplement an already generous salary (we all make an average of $7,000-$10,000 a month tax free), a pension at 8% of salary times years of service that can be cashed out tax free at any time, and educational subsidies for children of UN employees. Many also participate in an “alternative work schedule” in which they get every other Friday off. But don’t even try to apply. Your application will not be acknowledged nor will you ever get invited for a job interview. You must know someone to work at the UN (or worse, sleep with them).

There’s much more, ending with a request to contact your elected servant in the House and Senate and tell them to stop talking about reforming the UN, but to “create a NEW organization that can lead the world well into the 21st Century”.

Sounds like a fine idea to me.

HT to Dissecting Leftism

CIA Watch: how we can learn from the Mossad in fixing our dysfunctional intelligence agency.

Kerry Watch: The hubris of a billionaire’s self defense fund.

Economy Watch: US Steelmakers are expecting robust demand for the rest of the year, making it the third year in a row that demand has remained strong.

Tax Watch: It looks like Republican lawmakers will succeed in extending some of the tax cuts for another year or two.

UN Watch: U.N. peacekeepers, aid workers and teachers are having sex with Liberian girls as young as 8 in return for money, food or favors.

MSM Watch: The New York Times has once again been caught plagerizing.

Illegal Alien Watch: An Arizona sheriff is using an old tactic to find and arrest those entering our country illegally: posses.

Health Watch: Cancer resistant mice have been discovered. “When white blood cells from the mice are injected into other mice, they eradicate advanced tumours and provide lifetime protection against the disease. … Even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with very large tumours were eradicated.”

Looney Watch: PETA has launched an ad campaign in which PETA President and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk is quated as saying, “Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.” [One supposes the same goes for cancer.]

Fun Facts for Lefties: Fidel Castro is apparently worth $900 million and ranked seventh on the Forbes magazine list of wealthy heads of state.

After years of terrorist activity, the United Nations Security Council finally condemned a Hizbullah attack on Israel last Wednesday. If you are wondering why that august body finally noticed:

The condemnation followed by two days a failed attempt to get a condemnation issued on Monday, the day of the attack, when Algeria came out against any mention of Hizbullah in the statement.

When asked what changed from Monday to Wednesday, one diplomatic official replied: “John Bolton,” a reference to the US ambassador to the UN. Bolton lobbied vigorously for the passage of the statement.

The United Nations estimated that rebuilding the U.N. headquarters would cost $1.2 billion. Donald Trump said that the way the U.N. was going about it, the project would end up costing $3 billion.

The U.N. initiated a 60-day top-to-bottom review of the project to bring the cost of the project down. Instead, the review estimates the cost will be in the $1.9 billion range, even after implementing a number of cost-saving measures. In other words, before a single construction worker has been hired or a sheet of drywall purchased, the cost of the project has soared 58 percent!

Personally, I think Trump underestimated the U.N.’s propensity for failure. I predict $4.5 billion.

Oh, the humanity! UNICEF is bombing lovable Smurfs to “shock a complacent public” into reaching into their wallets and giving UNICEF great gobs of money:

The video is peacefully introduced by birds, butterflies and happy Smurfs playing and singing their theme song when suddenly out of the sky, bombs rain down onto their forest village, scattering Papa Smurf and the rest as their houses are set ablaze.

The bombs kill Smurfette leaving Baby Smurf orphaned and crying at the edge of a crater in the last scene of the video and finishing of with the text “don’t let war destroy the children’s world.”

It calls on viewers to donate.

Links to video: One version and a longer commercial version.

Update: Best headline: UNICEF Snuffs Smurfs:

Julie Lamoureux, account director for Publicis, the ad agency that created the campaign, says the original concept included even more graphic imagery of weapons of mass Smurfstruction.

“We wanted something that was real war–Smurfs losing arms, or a Smurf losing a head–but they said no,” she told the Telegraph.

That’s too bad. There’s nothing like realistic Smurf mayhem to make you think about the horrors of war.

Israel’s foreign minister on Tuesday underlined the Jewish state’s gains from its withdrawal from Gaza, disclosing that he met with his counterparts from more than 10 Arab and other Muslim nations this week.

Silvan Shalom also told the U.N. General Assembly that Israel would seek a seat on the powerful Security Council for the first time. …

“The iron wall” that stood between Israel and most Islamic countries is coming down, Shalom said. “Relations are growing at a rate never seen before.”

No one can deny that the changes going on in the Middle East are surprisingly significant. After all, who would have thought that Hamas would consider anything but the total destruction of Israel?

Hamas could one day amend a charter calling for the destruction of Israel and hold negotiations with the Jewish state, a political leader of the Islamic militant group in the West Bank said.

“The charter is not the Koran,” Mohammed Ghazal told Reuters in an interview in Nablus on Tuesday.

“Historically, we believe all Palestine belongs to Palestinians, but we’re talking now about reality, about political solutions … The realities are different.”

Astounding news. Still, anyone who thinks that Israel will get a seat at the most powerful table in the anti-semitic UN has got to be on crack.

Meanwhile, with the murder of 52 innocents still fresh on the minds of UK citizens, a delegation of British Muslims has the chutzpah to ask Tony Blair to do away with Holocaust Memorial Day — because it is an affront to their sensibilities. Columnist Carol Gould responds:

However, now that the Muslim community of Great Britain has put its cards on the table and shown how little it cares about interfaith relations, it is little wonder even the most liberal of Anglo-Jewish leaders have recoiled in horror at the request for the abandonment of British Holocaust Day. Frankly, the idea that anyone would suggest the scrapping of this day of remembrance is repugnant and, simply stated, a hideous slur on the Jewish people. The Holocaust, born out of the repeated lies perpetrated by Hitler and Goebbels and reinforced by centuries of Blood Libels and slanders against Jews across the Christian world, is a defining moment in Jewish history. One and a half million babies and children were exterminated.

Answer: Both are being investigated by Senate bodies.

A bipartisan Senate task force says that the U.N. is burdened by an “ossified managerial structure” and calls for sweeping changes:

Among dozens of recommendations, the task force calls for the U.N. to develop a rapid reacting capability to quash threats of genocide; set up an independent auditing board; and institute weighted voting on financial issues for members who contribute larger portions of the U.N. budget.

Is change possible, considering this?

Currently, member states who collectively pay less than 1 percent of U.N. dues comprise more than two-thirds of its membership, giving them power to block initiatives they don’t like.

In other news, one of those infamous unnamed sources says that an “influential Senate Republican body” is about to release a white paper that questions the impartiality of the International Committee of the Red Cross:

The paper will call for changes at the ICRC, including allowing non-Swiss nationals to become board members. It will also question whether the organisation is straying from its core mission by lobbying governments on issues such as biological weapons. …

The Senate aide said the policy paper would also call for an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the oversight arm of Congress, into how the ICRC spent its funding, about 28 per cent of which it receives from the US.

Hell, I’m against giving any money to any “international” organization that only allows Swiss nationals on the board.

And BTW, what do you call a Swiss national? A Swisser? A Swissican? If you just call them Swiss, what do you call a bunch of them? Swisses?

What do you know — they finally noticed:

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday condemned for the first time sexual abuse among peacekeepers after being told U.N. members ignored such exploitation for decades, fearing exposure of their own soldiers’ wrongdoing.

The United Nations has accused peacekeepers and civilian staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo of rape, pedophilia, and enticing hungry children with food or money in exchange for sex. Sexual abuse on a smaller scale was discovered in other missions.

Meanwhile, Kofi Annan gives a speech and his response to the decades-long sexual abuse of women and children the U.N. is supposed to protect is that the scandals are . . . embarrassing.

Hmmm. I wonder how long it will be before some lefty MSM journalists badgers Kofi about apologizing to the victims. I don’t think I’ll live that long.