Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares by Yevgeny Vuchetich, 1959.

Swords to ploughshares 

Excerpt:

And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (Micah 4:3)

Comment: Our reading tonight was Micah 3-7. We've been to the UN sculpture garden where this statue is displayed. In 1959, a bronze statue promoting the slogan "Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares" was donated by the Soviet Union to the United Nations. It was sculpted by Evgeniy Vuchetich to represent the human wish to end all wars by converting the weapons of death and destruction into peaceful and productive tools that are more beneficial to mankind. This hoped for peace will not occur until Christ comes.

On the same day - The Pope and "Imagine" at the United Nations

Shakira Performs John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ at the United Nations

Excerpt:

Pop superstar Shakira Mebarak performed a soulful rendition of “Imagine” at the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, the same day Pope Francis made a historic appearance at the meeting. Shakira lent her signature vibrato the John Lennon song, which she dedicated to Aylan and Ghalib Kurdi, two young Syrian boys who drowned fleeing violence in their home country. “Our children have the right to equal opportunities, to thrive, to be happy and healthy and safe,” she said. “Now is the time to not just imagine, but do.”

Pope Francis Addresses U.N., Calling for Peace and Environmental Justice

Excerpt:

With a passionate call from Pope Francis to choose environmental justice over a “boundless thirst for power and material prosperity,” world leaders on Friday adopted an ambitious agenda to reset their own priorities, from ending hunger to protecting forests to ensuring quality education for all.

“We want to change our world, and we can,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told a packed General Assembly hall.

The global goals, which emerged after three years of negotiations, are 17 in all. Known as the Sustainable Development Goals, they are not legally binding, and therefore not enforceable. But they carry a moral force of coercion, because they are adopted by consensus by the 193 member states of the United Nations.

They apply to all countries, not just poor ones, as was the objective of the last round of ambitions, called the Millennium Development Goals, which expired this year.

“The new agenda is a promise by leaders to all people everywhere,” the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, told the General Assembly. Central to the new set of global goals, which extend to 2030, is the idea of caring for the planet and for the world’s poorest citizens, which was also at the heart of the pope’s address — his first at the United Nations.

“Any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity,” Francis said, later reprising his argument that the poor are the biggest victims of environmental destruction. “A selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and the disadvantaged,” he said.

Comment: Lyrics to Imagine below

Imagine there's no heaven It's easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people living life in peace, you

You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope some day you'll join us And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope some day you'll join us And the world will be as one

Comment: There's a lot of worldview in Lennon's lyric. In response Psalm 2 comes to mind: "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision."

Will the U.N. trump the 2nd Amendment?

U.N. Agreement Should Have All Gun Owners Up In Arms

Excerpt:

While the terms have yet to be made public, if passed by the U.N. and ratified by our Senate, it will almost certainly force the U.S. to:

1. Enact tougher licensing requirements, creating additional bureaucratic red tape for legal firearms ownership.
   
2. Confiscate and destroy all “unauthorized” civilian firearms (exempting those owned by our government of course).
   
3. Ban the trade, sale and private ownership of all semi-automatic weapons (any that have magazines even though they still operate in the same one trigger pull – one single “bang” manner as revolvers, a simple fact the ant-gun media never seem to grasp).
   
4. Create an international gun registry, clearly setting the stage for full-scale gun confiscation.
   
5. In short, overriding our national sovereignty, and in the process, providing license for the federal government to assert preemptive powers over state regulatory powers guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment in addition to our Second Amendment rights.
   

Have no doubt that this plan is very real, with strong Obama administration support. In January 2010 the U.S. joined 152 other countries in endorsing a U.N. Arms Treaty Resolution that will establish a 2012 conference to draft a blueprint for enactment. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to push for Senate ratification. Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton has cautioned gun owners to take this initiative seriously, stating that the U.N. “is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there is no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.”

Comment: Don't trust the U.N.!

A French emergency

World Edgy on Korea, Russia Sees 'Colossal Danger'

Excerpt:

A French diplomatic source said the U.N. Security Council could hold an emergency meeting in the next day or two.

Comment: Had to laugh at this! At work, if we had 10 desktops out of commission because of a software push we would be 24 x 7 to resolve. Well the UN is feckless anyway!

[BLANK] stands up to the UN

______ president tells UN to stay out of economics

Excerpt:

_________ on Saturday criticized U.N. calls for increased "global governance" of the world's economy, saying the world body should leave that role to national governments.

The solution to dealing with the global economic crisis, _________ told the U.N. General Assembly, did not lie in "creating new governmental and supranational agencies, or in aiming at global governance of the world economy."

"On the contrary, this is the time for international organizations, including the United Nations, to reduce their expenditures, make their administrations thinner, and leave the solutions to the governments of member states," he said.

Comment: I wish I could fill in my President's name in the blank

United Nations Currency?

UN wants new global currency to replace dollar

Excerpt:

In a radical report, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has said the system of currencies and capital rules which binds the world economy is not working properly, and was largely responsible for the financial and economic crises.

It added that the present system, under which the dollar acts as the world's reserve currency , should be subject to a wholesale reconsideration.

Although a number of countries, including China and Russia, have suggested replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency, the UNCTAD report is the first time a major multinational institution has posited such a suggestion.

In essence, the report calls for a new Bretton Woods-style system of managed international exchange rates, meaning central banks would be forced to intervene and either support or push down their currencies depending on how the rest of the world economy is behaving.

Comment: Am I worried? No because I am a Christian and I have hope in God!

Sick joke from the U.N.

Your U.N. at Work

Excerpt:

The General Assembly of the United Nations voted this week to elect Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann as its new president. Readers with a long memory will recall Father D'Escoto (he's a Catholic priest) as Nicaragua's foreign minister during the Sandinista regime of the 1980s. He's also the winner of the 1985 Lenin Prize. Only at the U.N. does that count as a recommendation.

The U.N. also voted to name the government of Burma – which otherwise has been busy preventing humanitarian assistance from reaching hundreds of thousands of its own needy victims of last month's devastating cyclone – as one of the Assembly's vice presidents. Only at the U.N. is this not considered an embarrassment.

Comment: Another reason the UN doesn't matter!

"He who rules the sea, rules the land"

Another U.N. Power Grab: What would Reagan do? On the Law of the Sea Treaty, we know the answer

Excerpt: (comment since this is a concluding statement, best to read the entire article!)

Such developments only serve to reinforce the concerns President Reagan rightly had about the central, and abiding, defect of the Law of the Sea Treaty: its effort to promote global government at the expense of sovereign nation states--and most especially the United States. One of the prime movers behind LOST, the late Elisabeth Mann Borgese of the World Federalist Association (which now calls itself Citizens for Global Solutions), captured what is at stake when she cited an ancient aphorism: "He who rules the sea, rules the land." A U.N. publication lauding her work noted that Borgese saw LOST as a "possible test-bed for ideas she had developed concerning a common global constitution."

While we would not presume to speak for President Reagan, his own words and those of the man who worked most closely with him and us on Law of the Sea matters, Jim Malone, make one thing clear: Even if the 1994 Agreement actually amended LOST (and there are multiple reasons why it did not actually alter so much as a single word of the treaty), Ronald Reagan's belief in the U.S. as an exceptional "shining city on a hill" and his enmity towards threats to our sovereignty in general, and global governance schemes in particular, were such that he would likely encourage the Senate to do today what he did in 1982: Reject LOST.


United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea