A New World Order – a Plan to Reform the United Nations

Veritas-Pax Publishing unveils a bold plan to transform the United Nations into a world body whose very structure is designed to foster the global co-operation seen in the run-up to the G20 London Summit — but with one major difference. Under this plan, world leaders will unite for regular face-to-face meetings to chart a better tomorrow before the socio-economic challenges facing mankind erupt into the next crisis.

eMediaWire | Apr 2, 2009

Huntington Station, New York (PRWeb UK) April 1, 2009 — Kofi Annan called for it. Now Ban Ki-moon, his successor as Secretary General of the United Nations, has made UN reform his top priority. So far, not much has happened.

‘We at Veritas-Pax Publishing believe that after almost 20 years of bickering, it’s time to take action. The gathering of world leaders for the G20 London Summit on April 2 provides the perfect opportunity to get the ball rolling on the creation of the New Era of peace envisioned in The 7th Sense.’ In the book, which offers insights into creating a kinder, gentler world, Rev. Magnus details a plan to restructure the UN as the United Nations Executive Council.

Under the new three-tiered body, the Security Council that has been at the centre of so much division will be reined in — and its veto rights removed — as an important step in fostering the spirit of co-operation needed to create a better world for the common good. Under this plan, the Security Council will report to the United Nations Executive Council, which, as its name suggests, will have the executive powers necessary to deliver, in the words of Mr. Ban, the “concrete results in making people’s lives safer, healthier, more prosperous and free from fear and injustice.”

‘Our model for UN reform places emphasis on the “United” in United Nations through regular face-to-face meetings. The Executive Council membership is divided into three tiers’:

* First tier: Manned by a handful of people, mostly elder statesmen with name and track-record recognition, who will run the ongoing affairs of the council and meet on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
* Second Tier: Leaders of the G20 countries, who will meet monthly — in person at least six times a year.
* Third Tier: Leaders of the remaining member states of the UN, who will meet in person at least four times a year.

‘Under our model, no longer will the United Nations provide a forum for the ideological quarrels and the grandstanding that have sometimes crippled the current world body. If we are to have peace in this world, we need a group whose members are united, one that exists to pursue common goals and ideals for the betterment of all.’

‘For more information on the United Nations Executive Council, we invite you to visit our website at http://www.theunitednationsexecutivecouncil.org The public is invited to write to members of the G20 and let them know that the Executive Council is what’s needed to take mankind forward into the New Era where peace is the order of the day.’

Tribesmen protest against Predator drone attacks, demand compensation

An unmanned aerial vehicle’s Predator Hellfire missile is shown on a simulator’s virtual camera at the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, Calif. , June 25, 2008. As the U.S. military scrambles to get more robotic warplanes like the Predator drone aloft, it is confronting an unexpected adversary: human error. AP Photo

Protesters were holding placards inscribed with slogans like ‘stop drone attacks’, ‘stop killing innocent people’

Daily Times | Apr 1, 2009

Scores of tribesmen on Wednesday rallied against drone attacks in the Tribal Areas and demanded that the government compensate the people affected by the military operations.

Senator Saleh Shah, Malik Raza and other tribal elders led the protest demonstration. Condemning the drone attacks, they said the US had expanded the attacks to settled areas. The protesters were holding placards inscribed with slogans like ‘stop drone attacks’, ‘stop killing innocent people’. They also shouted anti-government slogans.

They added that the residents of the areas hit by the attacks including Chagmalai, Sararogha, Ladha, Makin and other areas had not been compensated so far. They also announced to hold a grand tribal jirga at the Political Compound on Thursday and adopted three resolutions, demanding an immediate end to the drone attacks, compensation for the affected people and development projects in the area.

Flood fight goes high-tech with Predator drones flying overhead

Woodbury Bulletin | Mar 29, 2009

FARGO, N.D. – Authorities began planning the use of military aircraft technology to fight the flood two months before the waters even hit record level.

North Dakota officials got word just last week that they would be allowed to use a Predator drone aircraft to fly over the area, providing real-time images of the rising Red River.

“It’s helped us an awful lot in monitoring ice jams, in detecting where there are breakouts,” said Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk, adjutant general of the North Dakota National Guard.

This is the first time technology has played such a role in flood fighting.

Greg Gust, a warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said the confidence with which forecasters can say the river has crested stems from images obtained by Predator drones flying over the river valley Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

“Our river forecasters are not only able to see in real time the aerial extent of the water but the flows going over land and all these breakouts, and actually measure that from those flights, which means getting an incredible handle on all that water we didn’t know where it was,” Gust said.

The unmanned aircraft is on loan from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The aircraft is permanently stationed in Grand Forks and being piloted from California, Sprynczynatyk said.

Officials monitoring the images in Bismarck and Fargo can relay to pilots where to direct the aircraft, typically used for military operations and border patrol, such as zooming in on a specific area, he said.

“To my knowledge, this is the first time we’ve used them for something like fighting a flood,” said North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven.

Normally, a Guard team in Fargo remotely pilots the Predator drones around the world and is very familiar with what the aircraft can do from the standpoint of reconnaissance and surveillance of an area, Sprynczynatyk said.

He added that fighting a flood isn’t really something the Guard trains for, but rather plans and prepares for by finding innovative and creative tools and resources. He cited Sunday’s use of 1-ton sandbags as such tool and a first in the flood fight.

“These bags are normally used to haul soybeans,” Sprynczynatyk said.

Using a Black Hawk helicopter, the Guard placed 11 of the sandbags along the north side of Oak Grove Lutheran School in Fargo to slow the flow of water coming into the building.

The reinforced plastic bags are cinched at the top and lifted by the helicopter’s cable system. People on the ground direct the bag exactly where it needs to be placed.

The bags are being used to prevent failure and breaches in the dike, especially in areas where there may be erosion from the current, Sprynczynatyk said.

The new technology isn’t going unnoticed by city officials.

“The difference between the ’97 flood and this flood is we have an amazing amount of technology to help us fight this flood,” said City Commissioner Tim Mahoney.

Nearly 3,000 Guard soldiers and airmen are on scene in North Dakota and Minnesota performing a variety of duties such as patrolling dikes, managing traffic and evacuations.

About 400 Guard personnel from Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota and Wisconsin are in North Dakota along with 2,000 North Dakota members, Sprynczynatyk said.

There are 334 Guard members in Minnesota.

Forum reporter Mike Nowatzki contributed to this report.

Seattle shivered through 10th coldest March on record with more severe winter weather on the way in April

Snow foolin! Winter still has bark

If you count the Downtown Federal Building records, which were used between 1891 and 1945, it’s the 10th coldest March on record.

KOMO News | Apr 1, 2009

By Scott Sistek

SEATTLE — Students who are on spring break this week enjoying a warm beach somewhere to the south might not believe we’re seeing more snow here in Western Washington.

A little snow fell in many of the higher elevations and foothills Wednesday morning as some cold air from Wednesday morning lingered just long enough to combine with an incoming front to drag the snow levels down — even Downtown Seattle has seen some flurries at times.

There were no major problems reported, and the snow did not appear to be sticking to many roads in the lowlands as temperatures were still a degree or two above freezing.

The Hood Canal area and hilltops above 700 feet could see a trace to 1 inch of accumulation before we warm to rain as the day progresses.

The rest of the afternoon will feature light rain at times, with highs gradually getting into the mid 40s.

Snow will be much more of a problem up in the mountains, where a Winter Storm Warning is in effect through 8 p.m. Thursday. Accumulations will become greater as we get into this evening and tonight, with 8-14″ possible. Then, another round of heavy snow expected Thursday with an additional 5-10″ expected.

So use caution and be prepared for delays if the Department of Transportation has to perform avalanche control work.

April Starts As March Finishes: Cold!

As we close the book on March, it will go down as the coldest March since 1976, and 7th coldest since records were kept at Sea-Tac Airport (1945). The average temperature was 41.7 degrees — a full 4.5 degrees below normal. (1976 was 41.2).

If you count the Downtown Federal Building records, which were used between 1891 and 1945, it’s the 10th coldest March on record.

Other cities were in the same boat. All of Forks, Hoquiam and Olympia had their third coldest March on record.

Finally, for just the third time sine 1891 that there has been over an inch of snow in each of the winter months — December, January, February and March. The only other times that has happened was in 1970-71 and 1895-96.

As Mexico battles cartels, military becomes the law

Retired soldiers tapped to run police forces

MSNBC | Apr 1, 2009

By Steve Fainaru and William Booth

ETATLAN, Mexico – President Felipe Calderón is rapidly escalating the Mexican army’s role in the war against drug traffickers, deploying nearly 50 percent of its combat-ready troops along the U.S-Mexico border and throughout the country, while retired army officers take command of local police and the military supplies civilian authorities with automatic weapons and grenades.

U.S. and Mexican officials describe the drug cartels as a widening narco-insurgency. The four major drug states average a total of 12 murders a day, characterized by ambushes, gun battles, executions and decapitated bodies left by the side of the road. In the villages and cities where the traffickers hold sway, daily life now takes place against a martial backdrop of round-the-clock patrols, pre-dawn raids and roadblocks manned by masked young soldiers.

Calderón’s deployment of about 45,000 troops to fight the cartels represents a historic change. Previous administrations relied on Mexico’s traditionally weak police agencies to combat the traffickers who funnel 90 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States. The cartels corrupted local authorities and reached tacit agreements with the national government, limiting the violence while the drugs continued to flow.

After Calderón became president in December 2006, he told Mexicans that the use of the military against the cartels would be limited and brief. But it is now the centerpiece of his anti-narcotics strategy, according to interviews with senior U.S. and Mexican officials and dozens of people on the front lines of the war.

“It can be traumatic to have the army in control of public security, but I am convinced that we don’t have a better alternative, even with all the risks that it implies,” said Monte Alejandro Rubido, a senior public security official who is overseeing the overhaul of Mexico’s police forces.

The military’s withdrawal is dependent on the success of the police reforms, according to the government. U.S. and Mexican officials predict that troops will be patrolling the streets for years. In many regions, the army has become the law. But rather than quelling the violence, it increasingly appears to have been drawn into a deepening morass of cartel rivalries, local political disputes and blood feuds.

In the southern state of Guerrero, the army ratcheted up security last year, killing several alleged drug traffickers and making dozens of arrests. That was followed by a two-month stretch in which nine soldiers were abducted and decapitated in the state capital, four policemen were incinerated in a daylight grenade attack near a beach resort and a former mayor was shot 24 times before 1,000 people packed into a plaza for the coronation of a town beauty queen.

Mexicans have greeted the unprecedented deployment of federal troops in their communities with a mix of gratitude and dismay.

“There are a lot of opinions. I personally feel more secure to see the army out in the streets,” said Denis González Sánchez, a 29-year-old city administrator in Petatlan, a Guerrero beach town of 30,000 where the army began patrols last year after three dozen gunmen massacred the family of a former mayor accused of links to traffickers. “A lot of people feel exactly the opposite: They say that the army is making us less secure. But I always think it’s better knowing that they are out there protecting us, that they are watching over us, when there is nobody else to do it.”

Mexican officials say the cartels operate on a $10 billion annual budget earned from drug sales in the United States; according to U.S. government estimates, they employ 150,000 people. This year, the Mexican government will spend $9.3 billion on national security, a 99 percent increase since Calderón took office.

Since December 2006, more than 10,100 people have been killed in the strife, including 917 police officers, soldiers, prosecutors and political leaders, according to Milenio, a Mexican media organization. At the same time, human rights complaints against the army have surged 576 percent, according to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, including allegations of unlawful detentions, forced disappearances, rape and torture.

A ‘courageous step’

Calderón and his advisers have described the military’s deployment as an emergency measure while he seeks to reform Mexico’s local, state and federal police. He has promised that when the new police forces are ready, the troops will return to their barracks. That process may take until the end of his six-year term in 2012, he said recently.

The government is attempting to vet and retrain 450,000 officers, most at the state and municipal levels, employing lie detectors, drug tests, psychological profiling and financial reviews to weed out corruption and incompetence. Nearly half of the 56,000 officers vetted so far have failed.