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.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) today said China and the Philippines should settle a dispute via a measure enshrined in the Law of the Sea treaty, a treaty that his Senate colleagues killed last year.

China has been engaged in territorial disputes with several of its neighbors — including Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam — over ownership of several small island chains and their potential natural resources for years now. The Obama administration has been seeking to broker a diplomatic solution to the conflict, urging negotiation through various forums.

Taking that advice to heart, the Philippines has filed an arbitration claim against China at International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, in an effort to gain a binding decision on the matter. Congressman Royce, currently traveling as part of a delegation to the Philippines, added his voice to the plea that China participate in the proceedings:

“It is best that China joins the process so that we can move forward under international law,” the California Republican told The Associated Press after meeting Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario and other diplomats in Manila.

“We want to calm the tensions,” Royce said. “We want this approached from the standpoint of diplomacy, and that is what we are conveying because in that way we don’t create crisis which roils the markets or creates uncertainty.”

Royce’s position is perfectly sensible and speaks to the importance of the role that arbitration plays in solving international disputes before they reach the point of violence. The United States, however, would be unable to avail itself of the Tribunal’s arbitration to get itself out of similar maritime quarrels. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which forms the authority of the Tribunal, has yet to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, despite being signed in 1994.

UNCLOS came closer than it ever has to acheiving the two-thirds vote necessary to come into effect during the last Congress. Support for treaty poured in from almost all sides — including in testimony from representatives of big business such as the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, members of the military, and five former Republican Secretaries of States — urging ratification.

The treaty still died at the hands of Republicans in the Senate, who seemed to take the word of conspiracy theorists over American interests. It may eventually come that the U.S. will require aid similar to the Philippines in working with China, aid that UNCLOS won’t be able to provide.

Earlier today, news broke that Iran claims to have successfully launched a monkey into space and retrieved it. While the event has been greeted with some mockery, the launch, if it indeed took place, may have been conducted against international law.

Iran’s simian traveler was reportedly launched in an “indigenous bio-capsule” to a height of over 75 miles before being recovered on its landing, according to the Fars state news agency. The launch is being billed by Iran as the prelude to sending humans into space, which they aim to achieve in the next five to eight years. Experts, however, remain skeptical that Iran currently possesses the technology required to send a living thing into space, let alone orbit.

The news of the supposed launch was not well received in Western capitals, however. When asked about “extraterrestrial primates” at today’s State Department press briefing, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland made clear that she could neither confirm nor deny that such a launch had taken place. If it had, though, Iran would be in violation of previous United Nations resolutions:

NULAND: Our concern with Iran’s development of space launch vehicle technologies are obviously well known. Any space launch vehicle capable of placing an object in orbit is directly relevant to the development of long-range ballistic missiles, as well as [satellite launch vehicle] technologies, and they’re all virtually identical and interchangeable. Just to remind, U.N. Security Council 1929 prohibits Iran from undertaking “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology.”

The resolution in question, passed in 2010 by the U.N. Security Council, contained the most comprehensive international sanctions package on the Islamic Republic to date over its continuing uranium enrichment. Among the clauses in the text of the resolution the full ban on development and testing of ballistic technology cited by Nuland.

Today’s response by the United States to the possible space launch echoes that of then-State Department spokesman Sean McCormack in 2008. “The kinds of technologies and capabilities that are needed in order to launch a space vehicle for orbit are the same kinds of capabilities and technologies that one would employ for a long-range ballistic missile,” McCormack said at the time. Adding to concern about Iran’s claim is the announcement on Iran’s PressTV today that new short, intermediate, and long-range missiles will be revealed early next month.

If confirmed, Iran’s launch today could result in further action by the Security Council, much as was recently taken against North Korea. The Council last week approved a resolution tightening existing sanctions on North Korea following a “satellite launch” in Dec. 2012 that Council members said was actually a test of ballistic missile technology. “This resolution demonstrates to North Korea that there are unanimous and significant consequences for its flagrant violation of its obligations under previous resolutions,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said after the resolution’s passage. The U.S. Mission to the U.N. was unable to immediately respond to inquiries about whether similar measures are being considered against Iran.

Rep. James Lankford (R-OK), the fifth-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives has called for defunding and abandoningof the United Nations, in favor of conducting U.S. international relations “in another way.”

Speaking before a town hall meeting earlier this month, Lankford gladly weighed in on every topic that his constituents threw at him. One resident seemed particularly riled by the insidious effect the U.N. has on the United States’ policies, particularly the ominous sounding “Agenda 21″ and its aims of achieving sustainable development. When asked about his views on the relationship between the U.N. and United States, Lankford didn’t hesitate to make his distaste for international partnerships clear:

CONSTITUENT: The UN in my opinion is a continuing criminal enterprise. I would like to know why we are still funding them?

LANKFORD: Right. [Loud applause] You know where I am on that completely. The UN had a set purpose in its earliest days of trying to form relationships, but it has far left that. Our technology has far exceeded the purpose of what we have in the UN. The “benefits” of what we could get out of the UN we can do with a telephone now and over a Skype. […] It is a transition of wealth from wealthy nations to poorer nations is what the UN’s sole purpose is now. I would be glad to defund it and do our relationships in another way.

Watch his remarks here:

Lankford is previously on record as supporting the concept of a Constitutional amendment prohibiting the U.S. from paying its dues to the United Nations, that time at another town hall in 2011. The Congressman was also one of 130 representatives who signed onto a letter warning of the dangers of any potential U.N. Arms Trade Treaty to the rights of Americans.

These stances put him well within the mainstream of GOP thought on international organizations, considering that the foreign policy plank in the 2012 Republican Platform firmly declared that Republicans “strongly reject the U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty.” Unfortunately for them, that places the GOP well outside the mainstream among the public, as polling shows approximately eight in ten voters believe that the U.S. maintain a strong role in the United Nations, and that the U.S. keep up a strong relationship with the U.N.

Contrary to the belief of Lankford and his questioners, the United Nations does much more than serve as a forum that can be replaced by Skype. The U.N. provides critical relief in the event of wars and natural disasters, sheltering thousands of refugees in the countries surrounding Syria and Mali, as well as feeding millions on the verge of starvation. Current U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice has also previously stated that the U.N. saves the U.S. millions in terms of providing security. “If the US was to act on its own – unilaterally – and deploys its own forces in many of these countries, for every dollar the US would spend, the UN can accomplish the mission for twelve cents,” Rice said in an interview in 2009.

Even U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton — a harsh U.N. critic — has praised the role the U.N. plays in providing humanitarian relief in times of disaster. That hasn’t stopped Republicans from pushing massive cuts to the organization and to the U.S. State Department since they retook control of the House in 2010 or spiking multiple treaties in the Senate.