Model international actors Iran and North Korea came together to block the adoption of a treaty regulating the $70 billion dollar arms trade at the United Nations on Thursday, no doubt endearing them to the National Rifle Association.

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) has been in negotiations for the past two weeks, the second attempt to gain a unanimously agreed upon text. The final draft was put before the delegates on Wednesday, with the assumption that it was set to cruise to an easy approval. That assumption was trampled once the Iranian delegation rose to break the required consensus for the treaty’s passage. Iran’s disapproval opened the door for North Korea to join in blocking the treaty. Syria also took umbrage at the text, leading to it and Iran reportedly both objecting to the lack of reference in the treaty’s final draft to foreign occupation or “crimes of aggression.” The President of the Conference quickly suspended the debate before a final vote could be held, leaving the door open to bringing the Iranian and North Korean delegations around, but the chances remain slim.

While not perfect, the treaty had still managed to appease the concerns of many advocates for stronger treaty-language. In particular, a hard fought clause regulating the import and export of ammunition and munitions made its way into the final text. Given the United States’ past hesitance in moving forward on the treaty — including its insistence that the ATT Conference work through consensus — and its current support, the late hour block from Iran and North Korea comes off as slightly ironic. The irony is even more pronounced when one considers that the Iranian delegate, in explaining his objection to the treaty, denounced the U.S.’ influence in shaping the treaty. “The right of individuals to own and use guns has been protected in the current text to meet the constitutional requirements of only one State,” Iranian ambassador Mohammad Khazeee said.

The treaty will now likely move to the General Assembly, however, where it will find the two-thirds necessary to finally pass next week. Given the crazy rhetoric present the last time it almost passed, the eventual passage of the ATT will be sure to provoke even more inflammatory opposition now. In opposing this version of the treaty, the National Rifle Association was much quieter about its lobbying effort, including a push for provisions exempting so-called “civilian firearms” from the treaty’s effects. There is no sign of that influence in the final draft of the ATT. However, the NRA still seems set to come out with a win on this one. Either the treaty is delayed, allowing more time to take it down for good, or it passes with the individual protections it supports hard-coded into the final document.

Their domestic influence will be marshaled once more though once the treaty is signed. At that point, the ATT will go to the U.S. Senate for ratification, where several Republicans have already made abundantly clear their skepticism regarding the very idea of regulating the arms trade. For years now, conservatives have used the supposed threat that an Arms Trade Treaty would entail as a fundraising tool or way to burnish their right-wing credentials. The Heritage Foundation has been slamming each successive draft of the ATT, and will now likely begin a campaign alongside the NRA to doom it in the Senate.

Senate Republicans are using the debate around the Fiscal Year 2014 budget to push as many of their far-right ideas as possible, including now a move to have the United States completely withdraw from the United Nations.

An amendment was filed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) for just such a purpose, purporting to delete all spending related to the United Nations from the FY14 budget. Specifically, the amendment calls for a reduction of $7,691,822,000 in spending 2014 and 2023. That slash goes beyond even the most draconian of cuts proposed by House Republicans since they reclaimed a majority in 2010.

According to the Better World Campaign, the U.S. payment to the United Nations includes two main parts. The first includes the United States’ contribution to the U.N.’s regular budget and the other bodies under the U.N. umbrella, the second payment into the U.N.’s international peacekeeping efforts. Contributions from across the entirety of the Federal government into the various parts of the U.N. system equals the total that Sen. Paul is seeking to cut, according to 2011 calculations from the Office of Management and Budget.

Paul appears to be following in the footsteps of his father — former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) — in advancing the call to have the U.S. completely pull out of the United Nations. The elder Paul was the primary sponsor of the “American Sovereignty Restoration Act,” a bill introduced periodically from 1999 to 2009 that would ban the U.S. from membership in the U.N. Despite this antipathy towards the United Nations, Ron Paul recently turned to the U.N. system to help him gain control of a website bearing his name.

But the Republican senator from Kentucky is no stranger to using U.N. paranoia to burnish his right-wing credentials. In 2011, he sent a conspiratorial email to his supporters, warning of a supposed U.N. plot to confiscate and destroy U.S. citizens’ guns via a “Small Arms Treaty.” In reality, the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty is only just now being developed and in no way will effect civilian ownership of firearms.

Paul’s office was unable to provide any indication of the support that the amendment was expected to receive, or when it would potentially hit the floor. Paul isn’t alone in his party in advocating a withdrawal from the U.N. despite its many benefits. In particular, the U.N. saves the U.S. millions in terms of providing security. “If the U.S. was to act on its own – unilaterally – and deploy its own forces in many of these countries, for every dollar the U.S. would spend, the U.N. can accomplish the mission for twelve cents,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said in an interview in 2009.

The U.S. public also disagrees with Paul on the necessity to withdraw the U.N. — a recent poll showed that eight in ten Americans believe that the U.S. needs to maintain a strong relationship with the United Nations.

The final document isn’t even complete yet, but one Republican Senator is already attempting to slip language into vital legislation denouncing the United States’ accession to a new treaty regulating the sale of arms between countries.

Representatives from around the world are meeting in New York over the next two weeks to hammer out a final agreement on how to best regulate the $70 billion arms trade between countries. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is attempting finalize passage of a budget for Fiscal Year 2014. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), a noted skeptic of international organizations and the United Nations in particular, filed an amendment Thursday afternoon that brings the two efforts together:

The Chairman of the Committee on the Budget of the Senate may revise the allocations of a committee or committees, aggregates, and other appropriate levels in this resolution for one or more bills, joint resolutions, amendments, motions, or conference reports that relate to upholding Second Amendment rights, which shall include preventing the United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT),by the amounts provided in such legislation for these purposes, provided that such legislation would not increase the deficit or revenues over either the period of the total of fiscal years 2013 through 2018 or the period of the total of fiscal years 2013 through 2023.

At present, it is unclear how many amendments the Senate will get to during its debate over the budget, nor precisely how much support the Inhofe amendment is set to receive. What’s clear though is that the amendment is representative of Republicans’ deep concerns over the supposed threat the Arms Trade Treaty would pose to American’s Second Amendment rights. Those concerns have been debunked by American Bar Association, making the continued attempts by Congressional Republicans to preemptively block the treaty utterly baseless.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) is currently chair of the Senate Budget Committee and is unlikely to utilize the authority Inhofe’s amendment would grant. Since the language would only apply to this year’s budget, the Oklahoman’s action can be seen as more symbolic than a real threat to the U.S. The threat posed by the Senate itself, however, is very real. Even the most benign of treaties has had a tough time reaching the two-thirds approval required for ratification, thanks to Republican fear-mongering and obsequiousness.

The fight over the ATT will likely grow in volume once the conference debating it approves a final text. Already there is legislation filed in the House and Senate to condemn the treaty. Approval of a final treaty is by no means certain though, thanks to groups like the National Rifle Association, which is already working to render the ATT dead on arrival.

The National Rifle Association is once again trying to affect the completion of a new arms treaty in New York, hoping to kill the treaty for good or include loopholes to render it toothless.

A new round of negotiations aimed at finalizing a potential Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) opened on Monday in New York, picking up with the draft where the last round left off. At stake: the regulation of the estimated $70 billion global arms trade, including the sale of small arms, tanks, and warplanes between countries.

The right-wing’s opposition to the ATT last year veered between the heated and the, well, insane. The NRA in particular was extremely vocal, including a visit by Executive Vice-President Wayne LaPierre to Turtle Bay to lobby. Since then, the group has had to confront a series of domestic challenges, including the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut and revamped efforts to pass gun violence prevention legislation. In a firey speech to this year’s CPAC, LaPierre focused on those issues, rather than the supposed threat the U.N. poses as he did in 2012.

The NRA has not completely given up on efforts, however, to affect the final treaty:

“What we really object to is the inclusion of civilian firearms within the scope of the ATT,” said Tom Mason, the group’s executive secretary and a lawyer who has represented the NRA at U.N. meetings for nearly two decades. “This is a treaty that really needs to address the transfer of large numbers of military weapons that leads to human rights abuses. We have submitted language that you can define what a civilian firearm is.”

Requests from ThinkProgress for the NRA to clarify what it meant by “civilian firearms” went unanswered, as did requests for the language they submitted. However, Michelle A. Ringuette, chief of campaigns and programs at Amnesty International USA, believes that any inclusion of provisions for “civilian firearms” would render the treaty toothless. “There is no such distinction,” Ringuette said in a statement. “To try to create one would create a loophole that would render the treaty inoperative, as anyone could claim that he or she was in the business of trading ‘civilian weapons.’”

The last set of talks collapsed last July when the United States and others refused to allow a vote on the document as it stood. Since then, the Obama administration has reversed course, allowing the current conference to proceed, making clear they would not be in favor of any infringement of U.S. citizens’ ownership rights. “We will not support any treaty that would be inconsistent with U.S. law and the rights of American citizens under our Constitution, including the Second Amendment,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement.

Even the American Bar Association has determined that the Arms Trade Treaty would have absolutely no impact on the Second Amendment in the U.S. Despite that, gun advocates in Congress are already rushing to condemn the draft treaty, with legislation already having been introduced in the House and Senate.

President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel and the West Bank — his first during his time in the White House — will draw attention to a peace process that is currently going nowhere.

CAP’s Matthew Duss, who is currently in the region, is concerned that despite calls on all side for a new round of talks between Israel and Palestine, direct negotiations may wind up being counter-productive:

While the Obama administration and its partners in the Quartet on the Middle East—the group made up of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and Russia, established in 2002—have stressed the importance of returning to direct talks over the past few years, some analysts I spoke with suggested that this may not be a good option at the moment. Given the level of frustration among Palestinians at their own government’s failure to deliver, it’s possible that the Palestinian Authority could not survive another round of failed negotiations.

In the near-term absence of further negotiations, Duss recommended the United States working quietly to address key issues to boost the Palestinian Authority’s credibility, including Palestinian prisoners in Israel and the on-going construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. “It’s very important, however, that the Palestinian Authority not be supported simply with the aim of prolonging an unsustainable status quo,” Duss warns, noting the necessity of a permanent solution.

The last direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority last took place in 2010, with the declared goal of developing a framework for an agreement within a year. The talks fell apart in late Sept. 2010, when Israel’s partial moratorium of new settlement construction expired.

President Obama’s trip to Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan will start next Wednesday and last until Saturday. While he is not expected to make any major policy announcements while there, his very presence is thought as an assist in revitalizing the peace process. According to Israel’s Channel 2, Secretary of State John Kerry will make a return trip to the region soon after Obama’s as part of a more substantive effort.

During last night’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama pledged that the United States would work towards ending extreme poverty around the world within the next two decades.

“[P]rogress in the most impoverished parts of our world enriches us all,” Obama said standing before the combined Federal government. “In many places, people live on little more than a dollar a day,” he continued, referring to the much cited World Bank definition of extreme poverty.

Obama then described exactly what ending such abject poverty would entail:

OBAMA: So the United States will join with our allies to eradicate such extreme poverty in the next two decades: by connecting more people to the global economy and empowering women; by giving our young and brightest minds new opportunities to serve and helping communities to feed, power, and educate themselves; by saving the world’s children from preventable deaths; and by realizing the promise of an AIDS-free generation.

Obama’s declaration came amid a section of the speech talking up other, seemingly higher profile international issues — such as the use of targeted killing in the fight against Al Qaeda and warning North Korea against further provocations. The firmness of the statement, however, stood out as the first time that a President has directly set such a target during a State of the Union Address.

Obama’s commitment echoes the eight principles in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), set forth by the United Nations in 2000. The MDGs have managed several successes since their implementation, including cutting global extreme poverty in half ahead of schedule. Other goals, including reducing the number of urban-dwellers living in slums and improving access to clean water, have been met early as well.

Many goals, however, will remain incomplete when the 2015 deadline set for many of the MDGs is reached. CAP Chair John Podesta was named to be a part of the High-Level Panel on Development, charged with charting a post-2015 course for development, by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon last August. The panel has met several times already, discussing a wide range of issues, including those in the President’s call to action. Podesta has written a white paper detailing possible approaches to connect the poorest of the poor to the global economy and give the poor the tools they need, like access to education and health care, to contribute to the development of their countries. The Panel is due to present their findings to the Secretary-General by June.

A freshman lawmaker in Tennessee is pushing to revoke the official status of any United Nations representative who sets foot within his state — and criminalize the actions of international elections monitors.

The proposal comes on the heels of last year’s right-wing outrage that the “United Nations” was sending officials to monitor the U.S. national elections. Unimportant to critics of the program was the fact that the program was neither run by the U.N. — instead being conducted by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe — nor that it’s been going on for more than a decade.

That hasn’t stopped newly elected state Rep. James “Micah” Van Huss (R) from introducing legislation that would keep such an atrocity from ever happening on Tennessean soil again. Van Huss has put forward two bills to stop the U.N. in its tracks. H.B. 588 adds a section into Tennessee law that reads: “Any representative of the United Nations who enters the state loses all official status and shall not operate in the state in any official capacity.” H.B. 589, meanwhile, puts forward that “Representatives of the United Nations shall not observe elections in the state” and that “violation of this section is a Class C misdemeanor.”

Van Huss, who came up with the push at a Tea Party event during his campaign, defended his proposal as being necessary to guarantee freedom:

“I feel, as a lot of my constituents do, that the United Nations continues to put forth agendas that would infringe on our personal liberties; that’s not the freedom that I fought for, and not the freedom that my buddies gave their lives for,” Van Huss, R-Jonesborough, told the Kingsport Times-News in an email.

The bill is being sponsored on the Senate side by state Sen. Frank Niceley (R). Disturbingly enough, Tennessee’s legislature may well pass Van Huss’ bill. Last year, the body sent to Gov. Bill Haslam (R) a non-binding resolution that slammed the U.N’s Agenda 21 for its “destructive and insidious nature.” Haslam rightly refused to sign the bill, as he believes that environmental protection and economic growth are not mutually exclusive. Requests for comment from the office of House Speaker Beth Harwell on Van Huss’ bills were not immediately returned.

Tennessee is just one of a multitude of states in which Republican lawmakers are attempting to place limits to the United Nations’ supposed overreaching power. During the lead-up to the election, Republicans from Texas and Iowa each threatened to arrest any OSCE observers who monitored elections.

Legislatures from Georgia to Oklahoma to Indiana have moved bills seeking to counter the U.N. and Agenda 21, whose threat to America’s golf courses Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has made well-known. The National Republican Party is also in on the action, having made sure to insert language into their 2012 Platform that called the non-binding series of resolutions “erosive to American sovereignty.”

Former Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) is taking a set of entrepreneurs to a body of the United Nations to gain control over the rights to RonPaul.com.

The whole affair stems from the fact that Paul owns neither RonPaul.com nor RonPaul.org, with both instead being owned and maintained by supporters of his. Those same supporters also maintain an e-mail list of over a hundred thousand names, by their count, a valuable asset to any politician or movement leader. When Paul stated on a radio show that he regretted not owning the rights to the domain RonPaul.com, the owners offered what they viewed as a fair price to Paul for ownership of the sites as well as the mailing list.

A quick summary provided by the maintainers of RonPaul.com explains the situation that followed:

The value we put on the deal was $250k; we are getting our mailing list appraised right now but we are confident it is easily worth more than $250k all by itself. Claims that we tried to sell Ron Paul “his name” for $250k or even $800k are completely untrue, and there is little doubt that our mailing list would have enabled Ron Paul to raise several million dollars for the liberty movement this year. It would have been a win/win/win situation for everyone involved.

Instead of responding to our offer, making a counter offer, or even accepting our FREE gift of RonPaul.org, Ron Paul went to the United Nations and is trying to use its legal process related to domain name disputes to actively deport us from our domain names without compensation.

The mention of “the United Nations” refers to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), one of many international bodies that falls under the U.N. umbrella of organizations. WIPO is empowered by the International Cooperation for Assigned Names and Numbers — the independent group that manages domains and website registries — to provide arbitration on name ownership disputes. Paul has filed a claim under what’s known as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which has the authority to turn over the rights of RonPaul.com to Paul — should he prevail in the case.

While Paul may have a case, the irony, however, of the former Republican congressman turning to the United Nations is palpable for several reasons. First, for constantly espousing free trade, that Paul would refuse to negotiate directly over a market value for a piece of property is stunning. What’s more, though, Paul has been a harsh critic of U.S. membership in the United Nations for years. He’s fallen firmly in the camp of those who believe that the United Nations is set to take the freedoms of Americans through such benign measures as Agenda 21. For someone who once said that “the choice is very clear: we either follow the Constitution or submit to U.N. global governance,” the whole supposed “global governance” thing doesn’t seem too bad to Paul once it becomes useful.