Serbia: 11,000 trapped in remote villages by snow

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) - At least 11,000 villagers have been trapped by heavy snow and blizzards in Serbia's mountains, authorities said Thursday, as the death toll from Eastern Europe's weeklong deep freeze rose to 123, many of them homeless people.

The harshest winter in decades has seen temperatures in some regions dropping to minus 30 C (minus 22 F) and below, and has caused power outages, traffic chaos and the widespread closure of schools, nurseries and airports.

The stranded in Serbia are stuck in some 6,500 homes in remote areas that cannot be reached due to icy, snow-clogged roads with banks reaching up to 5 meters (16 feet). Emergency crews were pressing hard to try to clear the snow to deliver badly needed supplies, and helicopters were dispatched to some particularly remote areas in Serbia and neighboring Bosnia.

On Bosnia's Mt. Romanija, near Sarajevo, a chopper thumped down in the small hamlet of Ozerkovici, where a single nun lives in a Serb Christian Orthodox monastery surrounded by just a few village residents.

Wrapped tight in a black jacket and a scarf, Sister Justina greeted aid workers at her monastery: "I live alone here," she said, but noted "God will help me."

In Serbia, relief efforts are concentrated on evacuating the sick, on food delivery and gasoline distribution.

"We are trying everything to unblock the roads since more snow and blizzards are expected in the coming days," Serbian emergency police official Predrag Maric told The Associated Press.

He said "the most dramatic" situation is near Serbia's southwestern town of Sijenica, where it has been freezing cold or snowing for 26 days, and diesel fuel supplies used by snowplows are running low.

Most people in the villages will have enough food supplies stored up for the winter, Maric said, but he warned those who are stranded not to try to go anywhere on their own and to call emergency services if they need help.

Newly reported deaths on Thursday because of the cold included 20 in Ukraine, nine in Poland, eight in Romania, and one more each in Serbia and the Czech Republic. In Western Europe, one person was reported dead in Germany and one in Italy.

Polish government spokeswoman Malgorzata Wozniak said her country's victims were mostly homeless people under the influence of alcohol who had sought shelter in unheated buildings. Officials appealed to the public to quickly help anyone they saw in need and homeless shelters were full.

In Warsaw, where the temperature Wednesday night was minus 22 C (minus 8 F), the narrow corridors of the Monar homeless shelter were filled with drying washing, and the residents crammed into a small dining room with bowls of soup.

Martyna, pregnant and unemployed, said she was grateful to find a place there after her family rejected her and her partner.

"This is the only safe place for me, where I can live and hide - from this sudden cold, too," the 22-year-old said. "I have nowhere else to go." She refused to give her last name, saying she didn't want anyone to know she was staying there.

Brothers Robert, 32, and Wieslaw, 27, arrived last week from Inowroclaw, in central Poland, saying they were promised full-time jobs that never materialized. They would have been left in the cold, but someone told them to go to the center, which currently houses 278 people.

"We don't have to worry anymore where we will spend the night," said Wieslaw.

"It is so cold outside that you don't want to leave here," his brother agreed.

Firefighters in Poland say that eleven people have died since Friday from asphyxiation with carbon monoxide, when they were using charcoal heaters to warm their homes.

In Ukraine, 63 people have died from the cold in the last week. Nearly 950 others were hospitalized with hypothermia and frostbite, and more than 2,000 heated tents have been set up with hot food for the homeless.

In Italy's financial capital of Milan, officials said a homeless man died from exposure Thursday.

About 180 schools were closed in Romania because of the freezing cold. Three ships were blocked on the Danube River - one German, one Dutch and one Romanian - and efforts were made to unblock them from ice.

In Bulgaria, where 16 towns recorded their lowest temperatures since records started 100 years ago, 1,070 schools across the country remained closed Thursday and large sections of the Danube were frozen, hampering navigation. Some villages in Bosnia have had no electricity for days and crews were working around-the-clock trying to fix power lines.

Temperatures in parts of Germany were as low as minus 11 Celsius (12 Fahrenheit) Thursday afternoon. In the eastern city of Magdeburg, police said a 55-year-old homeless man who apparently had frozen to death was found Thursday morning.

While the weather has yet to cause any significant disruption in the country, ferry services across the mouth of the Elbe river in northern Germany were suspended due to ice on Thursday.

However, the cold wave wasn't causing hardship everywhere.

Dutch authorities banned boats from some of Amsterdam's canals and waterways in the hope the big freeze gripping the city would turn the still water to ice and allow residents to go skating. They also turned off mills and pumps that regulate water levels in the low-lying, flood-prone nation to improve the chances of canals freezing over.

Speed skating is a winter obsession in the Netherlands and hopes are high about the possibility of holding the Elfstedentocht - or "11 Town Tour" - skating race being staged for the first time since 1997.

The 200-kilometer (125-mile) tour route takes skaters over frozen canals and lakes linking 11 towns in the northern Netherlands. The tour, which is also a race for elite skaters, has only been staged 15 times since the first official event in 1909.

My Way News

Russia warns against crossing 'red line'

New York, 1 Feb. (AKI/Bloomberg) - Russia warned Arab leaders against crossing a “red line” in trying to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and said it wasn’t the job of the United Nations to dictate who stays in power and who goes.

Arab League leaders, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and European foreign ministers called yesterday for the Security Council -- and indirectly Russia -- to adopt the Arab-European plan that would have Assad delegate his authority to a deputy who would start talks with the opposition within two months.

“The Arab League is now in the driver’s seat; sometimes you can press the accelerator too hard and you find yourself in a ditch,” Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said yesterday. “The Security Council cannot prescribe ready recipes for the outcome of domestic political processes.”

Syria was at the center of talks at the world body almost a year after an uprising began against Assad. The UN says more than 5,400 people have been killed in the conflict, which is evolving into a civil war.

As the UN started talks on Syria, Assad’s forces pressed into suburbs in Damascus and other parts of Syria to reclaim areas controlled by the opposition Free Syrian Army, according to Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The army has led a wide-ranging offensive to crush the FSA, made up of defectors and armed civilians, since Jan. 27, he said in an interview yesterday.

Dabbling

Russia blocked a December resolution seeking to hold Assad responsible for the violence in his country and has threatened to use its Security Council veto again. Syria hosts Russia’s only military base outside the former Soviet Union and is a buyer of Russian weapons.

Churkin said an agreement to end the violence in Syria is “not only possible, but necessary,” yet went on to reject any language in the draft resolution that can be interpreted as an attempt to force Assad out.

Once countries start dabbling in regime change “it is difficult to stop, then you will start telling what kings need to resign and what prime ministers need to step down,” Churkin told reporters after the council briefing by top Arab League officials.

The measure was introduced by Morocco, the only Arab nation on the Security Council. Arab and European countries will seek a council vote this week, said U.K Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant.

Arab League

“We will hold discussions with Russia and other nations over the next 24 hours to see if we can make progress on this resolution,” U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague told reporters in New York.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil El-Arabi and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani made their case before the UN’s decision-making body and sought to reassure Russia on its concerns.

The road map adopted on Jan. 22 should “in no way be interpreted as calling on the Syrian president to renounce power,” El-Arabi said, citing a pledge made to him by Assad in July that he would put his deputy, Farouk al-Sharaa, in charge. “This is very similar to the call of the Arab League as of now.”

‘Clear Message’

“It is time for the international community to put aside our own differences and send a clear message of support to the people of Syria,” Clinton said in a direct appeal to Russia.

“The alternative -- spurning the Arab League, abandoning the Syrian people, emboldening the dictator -- would compound this tragedy, mark a failure of our shared responsibility, and shake the credibility” of the UN, she told the council.

The latest draft of a Western-backed Arab League resolution on Syria also had language directed at Russia: “Nothing in this resolution compels states to resort to the use of force or the threat of force,” says the draft, obtained yesterday.

Syria’s Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari, Assad’s sole representative at yesterday’s meeting, accused foreign powers of meddling.

“Unbridled tendency by foreign states to interfere in our internal and external affairs through various mean is neither sudden nor novel,” he said.

In Washington, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said yesterday that time is running out for Assad.

“It’s a question of time before Assad falls,” he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Still, he said, “It could be a long time” given a protracted uprising and the fragmentation of the Assad opposition.

Adnkronos International

Cold weather death toll passes 100 in Ukraine

Most of the 101 who died were homeless people and 64 of them were found dead on the streets, the emergencies ministry said.

Hundreds of others have been treated in hospital for frostbite, hypothermia and other cold-related conditions.

Temperatures plunged to below -35C in parts of eastern Europe this week.

At least eight more deaths were reported in Poland on Thursday, bringing the death toll there since last week to 37.

Cold weather deaths have been reported across eastern and central Europe
Russia recorded cold 64 cold weather deaths for the whole of January, Interfax news agency reports, but it is unclear if this is related directly to the hard frosts which began last week
In Serbia at least 11,000 villagers have been trapped by heavy snow and blizzards in mountainous areas, the Associated Press reports
In Italy, weather experts said it was the coldest week for 27 years.Gas burn

In Ukraine, more freezing weather was forecast for Friday, with overnight temperatures set to fall to as low as -32C in the north and west.

The authorities closed schools and colleges and set up nearly 3,000 heating and food shelters across the country.

Health officials instructed hospitals not to discharge homeless patients, even after treatment, in order to save them from the cold.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov announced that the country had burnt 1bn cu m of gas in just three days.

The country's gas order from Russia for the whole of 2012 is 27bn cu m.

"It's a very hard time for the country," he said, promising that the difficulties would be overcome.

The Russian gas supplier, Gazprom, said Ukraine was exceeding the level of gas consumption envisaged in the contract.

Most Russian gas exports to EU countries transit Ukraine. On Thursday Austria's energy firm OMV reported a 30% drop in its supply of Russian gas, while Italy's gas distributor Snam Rete Gas said its Russian gas was down by about 20%.

In the winter of 2009 Russia accused Ukraine of siphoning off gas meant for European customers. Gazprom cut supplies, leaving more than a dozen countries short of Russian gas.

Some, like Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia, are almost completely dependent on supplies via Ukraine and so were left with major shortages, during a very cold spell in Europe.'Take exercise'

Ukraine's Emergencies Minister Viktor Baloga has advised the public to take more exercise as a remedy against the cold.

"You need to get up in the morning, take active exercise and work," he was quoted by Ukrainskaya Pravda as telling reporters on Wednesday.

"It hasn't killed anyone yet and only makes a person fitter."

His personal advice to keep warm, he added, was to "run 8-10km [5-6 miles] every morning and bathe in cold water, all year round".

BBC

Bombs hit evangelical Bible school in Sudan

(CNN) -- A Christian evangelical group said Thursday that a Bible school -- backed by American evangelist Franklin Graham -- was destroyed in the latest bombing raid to hit South Kordofan, an oil-rich Sudanese province that borders the newly created independent country of South Sudan.

At least eight bombs were dropped in the area Wednesday during the school's first day of classes, according to a statement by Samaritan's Purse, Graham's Christian humanitarian group, which supports the school.

Two bombs landed inside the compound -- located in the region's Nuba Mountains -- destroying two Heiban Bible College buildings and igniting grass fires across the area, the group said in a statement

No injuries were reported.

"It was a miracle that no one was injured," the statement added.

Graham, who has called on the international community to take out Sudan's air assets and establish a no-fly zone in the region, said in a statement Thursday that he blamed Sudan's air force for the strike.

At least four churches have been destroyed since August, the group said.

"We are deeply concerned for the welfare and lives of the people of South Kordofan and we condemn the bombing of churches and Christian facilities," added Graham, son of the famed Rev. Billy Graham.

More than 78,000 people have fled South Kordofan and Blue Nile states since August of last year after an armed rebellion took root, the United Nations reported. The Sudanese government is thought to have responded to the rebellion by conducting sustained air raids with the use of Russian-made Antonov bombers, which have raised concerns over civilian casualties.

Decades of civil war between the north and south, costing as many as 2 million lives, formally ended with a U.S.-brokered peace treaty in 2005.

But before South Sudan gained independence in July of last year, human rights monitors expressed concerns that longstanding grievances could again lead to violence consuming the region.

In November, there were several days of bombings near an entry point for refugees at the border, the United Nations reported. It did not specify who launched the bombs.

CNN

China and Russia refuse regime change for Syria

Hungarian airline Malev collapses

"At 0500 GMT... after 66 years of almost continuous operation Malev will no longer take off," it said.

It came after the European Commission ordered Malev to repay various forms of state aid received from 2007 to 2010.

The sums involved amounted to 38 billion forints (130m euros; $171m; £108m), a sum equal to its entire 2010 revenue.

"Despite its best interests the owner can no longer provide financial resources for the operation of the airline in the wake of the condemning decision of the European Commission," an airline statement said.

The European Consumer Organisation, which "defends the interests of all Europe's consumers", said the news came after Spanair's collapse in the very same week.

"This development is yet more incontrovertible proof that the current update of European legislation on air travel must incorporate a mandatory guarantee against airline bankruptcies," it said.'Inherited skeletons'

The carrier employs 2,600 people and is responsible for close to half of all air traffic at Budapest Liszt Ferenc airport.

Part of the Oneworld airline alliance, which also includes American Airlines and British Airways, Malev has a leased fleet of 22 passenger aircraft.

In 2010 it posted a loss of 24.6bn forints, although an improved 2011 figure had been predicted.

Chief executive Lorant Limburger said the immediate reason for the collapse was the demand for upfront payments by its suppliers.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on state radio that two Malev planes were still overseas, one in Tel Aviv, the other in the Irish Republic.

The premier said those planes were not allowed to take off because of Malev's debts.

He told radio station MR1-Kossuth that Malev may possibly be relaunched "if we manage to get rid of the inherited skeletons".

On Thursday, Hungary's government appointed a receiver to the airline to try to protect it from creditors' claims.

Hungarian newswire MTI had said that 64 Malev flights were scheduled to fly from Budapest on Friday.

BBC

Old Jewish scrolls found in Afghanistan

Israeli professor says 150 documents dating back to 11th century provide 'exciting evidence' enabling researchers to study Jewish community's writings

A cache of ancient Jewish scrolls from northern Afghanistan that has only recently come to light is creating a storm among scholars who say the landmark find could reveal an undiscovered side of medieval Jewry.

The 150 or so documents, dated from the 11th century, were found in Afghanistan's Samangan province and most likely smuggled out – a sorry but common fate for the impoverished and war-torn country's antiquities.

Israeli emeritus professor Shaul Shaked, who has examined some of the poems, commercial records and judicial agreements that make up the treasure, said while the existence of ancient Afghan Jewry is known, their culture was still a mystery.

"Here, for the first time, we see evidence and we can actually study the writings of this Jewish community. It's very exciting," Shaked told Reuters by telephone from Israel, where he teaches at the Comparative Religion and Iranian Studies department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The hoard is currently being kept by private antique dealers in London, who have been producing a trickle of new documents over the past two years, which is when Shaked believes they were found and pirated out of Afghanistan in a clandestine operation.

It is likely they belonged to Jewish merchants on the Silk Road running across Central Asia, said T. Michael Law, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford University's Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

"They might have been left there by merchants travelling along the way, but they could also come from another nearby area and deposited for a reason we do not yet understand," Law said.


'Sold elsewhere for 10 times more'

Cultural authorities in Kabul had mixed reactions to the find, which scholars say is without a doubt from Afghanistan, arguing that the Judeo-Persian language used on the scrolls is similar to other Afghan Jewish manuscripts.

National Archives director Sakhi Muneer outright denied the find was Afghan, arguing that he would have seen it, but an advisor in the Culture Ministry said it "cannot be confirmed but it is entirely possible".

"A lot of old documents and sculptures are not brought to us but are sold elsewhere for 10 times the price," said advisor Jalal Norani, explaining that excavators and ordinary people who stumble across finds sell them to middlemen who then auction them off in Iran, Pakistan and Europe.

"Unfortunately, we cannot stop this," Norani said. The Culture Ministry, he said, pays on average $1,500 for a recovered antique item. The Hebrew University's Shaked estimated the Jewish documents' worth at several million dollars.

Thirty years of war and conflict have severely hindered both the collecting and preserving of Afghanistan's antiquities, and the Culture Ministry said endemic corruption and poverty meant many new discoveries do not even reach them.

Interpol and US officials have also traced looted Afghan antiquities to funding insurgent activities.

In today's climate of uncertainty, the National Archives in Kabul keep the bulk of its enormous collection of documents – some dating to the fifth century – under lock and key to prevent stealing.


Ynet News

Gold keeps up rally after best January in 32 years

LONDON, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Gold rallied for a second day on Wednesday, supported by upbeat economic data from Germany and the United States, with the precious metal building on gains in January that marked its strongest year-opening month in 32 years.

Spot gold was up 0.4 percent at $1,744.15 an ounce at 1534 GMT, on course for a fifth straight week of gains.

It rose 11 percent in January, the largest one-month gain since August 2011 and the largest for the month of January since 1980, thanks to a combination of the weakness in the dollar from a Federal Reserve commitment to keep U.S. rates near zero and central bank purchases.

Evidence of Germany's economic health helped boost the euro, and gold by extension.

Market sentiment was also boosted by data showing the pace of growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector picked up in January to its highest level since June.



"If economic data comes in on the positive side and if the U.S. labour market report on Friday doesn't disappoint, then there is still upside potential for gold, but it depends on the recovery in the euro zone and Greece's debt rescheduling," said Peter Fertig, consultant at Quantitative Commodity Research.

The single European currency was expected to remain under pressure from concerns about Greece, however, even after its finance minister said talks with private creditors on a swap deal vital to avoid a chaotic default, were "one formal step away".

Analysts largely expected gold to rally this year, although many say that a pull-back in the near term looks likely.

"Buyers have returned to the euro, which is helping the situation in gold. It had a bit of lacklustre profit-taking yesterday but didn't break anything important on the downside, which helped confirm that being long is back in vogue," Ole Hansen, senior manager at Saxo Bank, said.

"The last two weeks have done a heck of a lot to confidence, and we've seen that attempted corrections have been short-lived, so the mood has definitely changed, but overall, we are overbought quite significantly ... so there will be some kind of consolidation."

The gold price has risen by nearly 15 percent since hitting six-month lows in late December.

Anecdotal evidence of robust Chinese demand over the Lunar New Year holiday last week, together with figures on holdings of the metal in exchange-traded funds and U.S. futures, have added to the perception that the investor mood towards gold has become more positive following December's sharp drop.

"Concerns about Greece and Portugal are keeping demand for gold high and supporting the price. Yesterday gold defied the downward trend in commodity prices and a firmer U.S. dollar, increasing to an eight-week high of $1,748 per troy ounce," Commerzbank analysts said in a note.

"There has still been no breakthrough in negotiations (on Greek debt) ... The sovereign debt crisis will thus continue to preoccupy the markets for some considerable time yet and should support the gold price," they said.

Gold priced in euros was trading at its highest in nearly six months, having also staged its biggest monthly rise in January since August, with a gain of 10 percent.

Holdings of metal in ETFs rose by over 650,000 ounces in January, marking the first month of net inflows in two months. December's outflows of nearly 1 million ounces coincided with the second-largest monthly drop in the gold price since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008.

Silver outpaced the rest of the precious metals complex, rising nearly 2 percent on the day to trade at $33.71 an ounce. The silver price rose by nearly 20 percent last month, in its largest monthly rally in nine months.

Platinum and palladium both rallied in line with firmness across the industrial commodities complex. An uptick in Chinese factory activity in January offered further support to raw materials prices.


Reuters

The United Nations Wants To Crash The World Economy In Order To Save The Environment

The United Nations says that the earth is in great danger and that the way you and I are living is the problem.  In a shocking new report entitled, "Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing" the UN declares that the entire way that we currently approach economics needs to be changed.  Instead of focusing on things like "economic growth", the UN is encouraging nations all over the world to start basing measurements of economic success on the goal of achieving "sustainable development".  But there is a huge problem with that.  The UN says that what we are doing right now is "unsustainable" by definition, and the major industrialized nations of the western world are the biggest culprits.  According to the UN, since we are the ones that create the most carbon emissions and the most pollution, we are the ones that should make the biggest sacrifices.  In addition, since we have the most money, we should also be willing to finance the transition of the developing world to a "sustainable development" economy as well.  As you will see detailed in the rest of this article, the United Nations basically wants to crash the world economy in order to save the environment.  Considering the fact that the U.S. and Europe are in the midst of a horrible economic crisis and are already drowning in debt, this is something that we simply cannot afford.

There is certainly nothing wrong with taking care of the environment.  But what the United Nations wants is a fundamental restructuring of the global economy based on flawed science.

In this new UN report, we find the following statement....

Achieving sustainability requires us to transform the global economy. Tinkering on the margins will not do the job.

This is absolutely crucial to understand.

The folks over at the UN don't just want to change things a little.

Their goal is a radical transformation of the entire world.

According to the United Nations, if we don't implement their recommendations the consequences will be absolutely disastrous....

But what, then, is to be done if we are to make a real difference for the world’s people and the planet? We must grasp the dimensions of the challenge. We must recognize that the drivers of that challenge include unsustainable lifestyles, production and consumption patterns and the impact of population growth. As the global population grows from 7 billion to almost 9 billion by 2040, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially. By 2030, the world will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water — all at a time when environmental boundaries are throwing up new limits to supply. This is true not least for climate change, which affects all aspects of human and planetary health.

So what changes are needed in order for us to achieve a "sustainable" global economy?

Well, the following are some of the disturbing recommendations that we find in the new UN report....

Raise Prices

According to the United Nations, we need to start significantly raising the prices of things that are made in an "unsustainable" way so that they reflect the "true cost" of their production....

Most goods and services sold today fail to bear the full environmental and social cost of production and consumption. Based on the science, we need to reach consensus, over time, on methodologies to price them properly. Costing environmental externalities could open new opportunities for green growth and green jobs

That means that you and I would start paying a lot more for the basic things that we need every day - food, gasoline, etc.

Carbon Taxes

The UN report also discusses the need to use regulations and taxation as tools to penalize economic activities that are not "sustainable"....

Establish natural resource and externality pricing instruments, including carbon pricing, through mechanisms such as taxation, regulation or emissions trading systems, by 2020

This is one of the favorite things that social engineers like to do.  They love to use taxation and regulations as weapons to get people to do the things they want.

Base Lending Decisions On Sustainable Development Criteria

The United Nations is actually suggesting that lending decisions be based on whether or not the money will be used for something "sustainable"....

Reform national fiscal and credit systems to provide long-term incentives for sustainable practices, as well as disincentives for unsustainable behaviour

Considering the fact that the entire global economy is based on credit, this is a very dangerous recommendation.

Green Jobs

The UN report also says that governments all over the world should seek to create as many "green jobs" as possible....

Governments should adopt and advance “green jobs” and decent work policies as a priority in their budgets and sustainable development strategies while creating conditions for new jobs in the private sector.

This is something that we have seen Barack Obama try to do, but obviously he has not had much success at it.

A New Economic Paradigm

According to the UN, the very way that we define "economic success" needs to be changed.  Instead of looking at statistics such as GDP and inflation, we should be measuring what we do by how much it gets us closer to a "sustainable world"....

Expanding how we measure progress in sustainable development by creating a sustainable development index or set of indicators

So an economic collapse could actually be "good" if we make "progress" toward the goal of sustainable development.

Wealthy Countries Funding The Sustainable Development Goals Of Poor Countries

The UN report makes it clear that you and I will be paying for sustainable development all over the world in addition to paying for our own transition to a sustainable economy....

Financing sustainable development requires vast new sources of capital from both private and public sources. It requires both mobilizing more public funds and using global and national capital to leverage global private capital through the development of incentives. Official development assistance will also remain critical for the sustainable development needs of low-income countries

But considering the fact that the United States is already flat broke, where are we going to come up with all of this money?

Teach Sustainable Development To Our Children

The United Nations also believes that this philosophy of "sustainable development" should be taught to children in public schools all over the globe....

Government and non-governmental entities should promote the concept of sustainable development and sustainable consumption, and these should be integrated into curricula of primary and secondary education.

Sadly, this agenda is already being pushed on our children in schools all over the United States.  When these children grow up, the concepts behind "sustainable development" will be second nature for them.

Population Control

Those that believe in sustainable development want to reduce carbon emissions by as much as possible.

When you sit down and really think about that, it becomes quite frightening.

Nearly every form of economic activity produces carbon emissions.

In fact, if you just sit in your home and breathe, you are producing carbon emissions.

So to them, you and I are the problem.

For those that are worried about man-made global warming, the math is simple.

The more people on earth, the higher the level of carbon emissions will be.

The less people on earth, the lower the level of carbon emissions will be.

So those that believe in sustainable development love to promote things that will reduce the human population of the earth.

In fact, we see this agenda reflected in one of the recommendations of the new UN report....

Ensuring universal access to quality and affordable family-planning and other sexual and reproductive rights and health services.

If more women have access to abortion facilities, then less babies will be born.  For those that believe in sustainable development, that is a good thing.

But the UN has been pushing this kind of agenda for a long time.

For example, the United Nations Population Fund released a report back in 2009 entitled "Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate" that included the following very chilling statement....

"Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendants. Hence, the emissions savings from intended or planned births multiply with time."

This population control agenda is also being heavily promoted by many of the wealthiest people in the world.  Many big "philanthropists" such as Bill Gates are using their money to fund research into population control measures.  For example, Gates is currently funding research on "cutting edge" forms of birth control that could potentially be used all over the world.  The following comes from a recent Natural News article....

Mass vaccination is apparently not the only depopulation strategy being employed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as new research funded by the organization has developed a way to deliberately destroy sperm using ultrasound technology. BBC News reports that the Gates Foundation awarded a grant to researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) to develop this new method of contraception.

For their study, the UNC team tested ultrasound on lab rats and found that two 15-minute doses "significantly reduced" both sperm counts and sperm integrity. When administered two days apart through warm salt water, ultrasound caused the rats' sperm counts to drop below ten million sperm per milliliter, which is five million less than the "sub-fertile" range, and stay that way for up to six months.

This population control agenda is one of the most frightening elements of sustainable development.  Many advocates of sustainable development would actually cheer if something suddenly caused the population of the earth to drop dramatically.

Much Stronger Global Governance

The new UN report also advocates stronger "international governance" by bodies such as the United Nations....

International institutions have a critical role. International governance for sustainable development must be strengthened by using existing institutions more dynamically and by considering the creation of a global sustainable development council and the adoption of sustainable development goals

But this has been the ultimate goal of these control freaks for a long time.  The idea is that a "global government" and a "global economy" will bring a great era of peace and prosperity to all of humanity.

Of course that is a complete and total lie, but there are a lot of people out there that actually believe this stuff.

In fact, the economic crisis that we are going through right now has renewed calls for a "global currency" which would be used by the whole world.

For example, you can watch banker Evelyn de Rothschild discuss the "need" for an "international currency" on Bloomberg Television in the following video....

The new UN report reflects this globalist agenda.  The report states that "the peoples of the world" are not going to put up with all of this "inequality" any longer and that they will be demanding that their national governments adopt a "sustainable development" agenda....

"The peoples of the world will simply not tolerate continued environmental devastation or the persistent inequality which offends deeply held universal principles of social justice. Citizens will no longer accept governments and corporations breaching their compact with them as custodians of a sustainable future for all. More generally, international, national and local governance across the world must fully embrace the requirements of a sustainable development future, as must civil society and the private sector."

If you want to get a really good idea of what a "sustainable development" society would look like, just check out the video posted below....

If you do not want to end up living in a "Planned-opolis" where virtually everything you do is watched, tracked and controlled by bureaucratic control freaks, then you better say something now.

If the United Nations actually succeeded in implementing this agenda worldwide, it would crash the global economy and it would be the end of national sovereignty.

Unfortunately, many of those that are promoting this agenda are absolute fanatics about it because they are convinced that they are saving the planet.  They are so obsessed with "rescuing the earth" that they would do almost anything to all the rest of us in order to accomplish that goal.

Yes, we need to be concerned about the future of the planet, but the truth is that the "sustainable development" agenda is based on flawed science and it would make our economic problems far worse.

But the control freaks that are obsessed with "sustainable development" are going to continue to try to cram this agenda down our throats, so this is a battle that is likely to go on for many years.

Economic Collapse