Could it be yet another knock-on effect of the crumbling of the United Nations ‘climate consensus” facade? One of Kofi Annan’s old-boy clubs appears to be in trouble.

Since retiring from the United Nations, Kofi Annan — among his other activities — has been serving as president of a Geneva-based foundation,  the Global Humanitarian Forum, headquartered in a delightful villa smack near the front gates of the UN’s palatial Geneva office complex — and especially fond of promoting “climate justice.” The foundation fields a board crammed with UN retreads from Kofi Annan’s days as UN Secretary-General, and is supposed to be devoted to “exemplary” programs in humanitarian assistance (something that can hardly be said of the UN itself under Annan’s 1997-2006 management). Among the board members are Annan’s former special adviser, Lakhdar Brahimi; former head of the UN’s world Food Program, Catherine Bertini; former UN humanitarian coordinator, Jan Egeland; former head of the discredited old Human Rights Commission, Mary Robinson; and former heads of the IMF and World Bank – Michel Camdessus and James Wolfensohn… you get the idea. Also on the board is a name that climategate buffs will recognize – head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri.

If that sounds like a recipe for success, apparently this mix is less appealing than when all these folks were empowered to tap directly into torrents of tax dollars (especially U.S. tax dollars) — though this foundation does seem to have received plenty from assorted governments. But not enough, it now seems. The foundation’s web site is reporting that due to “disappointing receipts from donors,” the board is “urgently considering options for the future direction of the organization.”

I don’t have details at this point on why, exactly, donors have been losing interest. Could it possibly be that this climate-crusading crew has become somewhat less enticing a bet?

Movies about North Korea are rare enough so that when one turns up in the theaters, it’s worth knowing about.

The movie at hand is one I first heard about in 2004, at a conference in Warsaw on human rights (or, rather, the utter lack thereof) in North Korea. There were North Korean defectors there, telling their stories; and policy types looking for ways to do something about it all. And there was an American woman there named NC Heikin, who said she wanted to make a film about the horrors of North Korea, and the stories told by some of the defectors — many of whom had endured incredible rigors and sacrifice to escape to the free world.

Heikin made that movie. Titled Kimjongilia, it is opening tomorrow in New York City. As she notes on the movie’s web site, one of the difficulties of chronicling the abuses inside North Korea is that apart from official propaganda, there is so little footage available from inside the country — and the North Korean regime is not about to allow film-makers to show the truth. So Heikin weaves together interviews with defectors, official North Korean footage, and interpretive dance, to tell the story.

Someday, North Korea’s regime will go – and the TV news and talks shows will be packed with people talking about the horrors that went on within, and they will be asking how the world let this go on for so long. NC Heikin is raising that question now.  So, a heads up if you happen to be in Manhattan — you should be able check on locations here. And if you are not in Manhattan, but want to sample some of the film, here, again, is the site.

Call it a litmus moment. The ancient Persian New Year, Nowruz, approacheth — this coming Saturday, March 2oth.

What will President Obama do?

Last year, he extended a hand – or more like both arms – putting out a video message from the White House — remember this? — wishing Happy Nowruz to “you, the people and leaders of Iran.” It was a greeting full of talk about “shared hopes…common dreams…mutual respect” and “this precious humanity we all share.”

Iran’s rulers bit the extended hand (or arms), thumbed their noses at a series of proposed nuclear climbdown deals and deadlines, continued funding and training terrorists dedicated to the destruction first of Israel and ultimately of Western democracy, and stepped up the imprisonment, torture and murder of dissidents to new and widely visible levels — a process that underscored the importance of distinguishing between the people of Iran and their rulers, rather than lumping them all together in one big happy new year’s greeting.

Here we are, as the second Nowruz rolls around, and the tussle continues in Washington, and at the United Nations, over whether or how or when to impose more sanctions on Iran – as the ayatollahs, with their terror-based, predatory regime move ever closer to becoming a nuclear power in the heart of the Middle East. If Obama, the newly laureled Nobel peace-prize winner, is going to say anything at all this year to mark Nowruz, he’d do well to skip any salutation to Iran’s “leaders,” and address only the people of Iran, with the wish that this might be the year they finally achieve the freedoms, and begin the transition to the kind of benign democracy they have been so brutally denied. With Washington absorbed in Obama’s manufactured “crisis” over “healthcare,” there are real crises out there that the White House just keeps letting slide — especially Iran’s nuclear program.  But Nowruz is coming round again. How will Obama handle it this time?

What’s the most e-mailed article right now on Al-Jazeera’s English language web site?

It’s an opinion piece about Iraq’s elections, headlined “Iraq: An example for the region.”

Someone out there is very interested in that proposition — actually, a great many someones are so interested that this article (which conveys praise of Bush, and a faith in democracy, that are both much at odds with a lot of Al-Jazeera’s usual coverage) has been the #1 most emailed article on Al-Jazeera for five straight days.

True, this is Al-Jazeera’s English language web site, not the Arabic — nonetheless, folks inclined to log on to Al-Jazeera (this will give you an idea of its huge TV footprint) are clearly taking a good look at this piece, and sending it around.

The author is Richard Grenell, who served during the George W. Bush presidency as spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations –working under four ambassadors, including John Bolton. Grenell makes no apologies for Bush’s 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein. Rather, he celebrates it as ushering in an era of “free and fair elections” in Iraq, and says that while Iraq’s young democracy is “messy, incomplete and imperfect,” it is also “currently the envy of the Arab world.” He argues that Iraqis are lucky they had the backing of Bush, and that if Obama had become president earlier, with his wish to cut and run, it would have been a disaster for Iraq.

Today, writes Grenell, Iraq’s March 7 election reminds us that “Bush’s vision for democracy in the Middle East is beginning to unfold with the consecutive democratic elections in Iraq and Afghanistan.” He closes with the questions: “Which Arab country will be next? Who will start the long, expensive and bloody process of bringing freedom and democracy to their people?”

If Al-Jazeera’s web site readers find that commentary and those questions interesting enough to make them the most emailed on the site for five straight days, sounds like one more sign that Bush was right about that craving for democracy –yes, even in Al Jazeera’s main stomping grounds of the Middle East.

There are times in life, and especially in politics, when it helps to step back and take a bemused look at the long view. Just such a moment has arrived for the residents (and I am one) of New York’s 29th congressional district — represented, at least until today, by former Rep. Eric Massa.

Effective as of today, March 9, as the monstrous health care plan crawls toward consummation, our district has no representative in Congress. Google Massa’s congressional web site, and you get a page headed “Current Vacancies.” If you want to see Eric Massa, you can tune in to replays of today’s Glenn Beck Show, where Massa just regaled the TV audience with locker room tales of a nude confrontation with presidential chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and a romper-room birthday tickling fight with a male staffer — text messages, perhaps, to follow? (Credit Glenn Beck, at least he apologized to his audience for Massa’s performance).

Massa, child of a political era in which the only word more important than “is” is “I,” made the obligatory show of taking responsibility, saying “I own this behavior.”

Sorry, Mr. Massa, but you were elected not to serve yourself — but to serve your constituents. Your assessment of Rahm Emanuel – as someone who would tie your kids to the railroad tracks — may be right on target. Your stand against the “healthcare” horror was commendable. But did you have to “own” behavior that made it so easy to eject you from a seat that belongs not to you, but to your district? Not everyone in the 29th District voted for you, but this is a democracy, and once you won that seat, they were all depending on you. There are a lot of decent folks in your former district, working hard to make a living, working harder all the time to pay the sky-high taxes, watching one big-government grab after another, and very worried about where this is all going. There’s quite a mutter going on in the town meetings. Now what?

You’ve probably come across him in the news this week: Mosab Hassan Yousef, eldest son and heir-apparent for years of one of the founders and leaders of the terrorist group known as Hamas — a strict Islamic organization, backed these days by Iran; dedicated to the destruction of Israel; now controlling Gaza; and a font over the years of suicide bombers and rocket attacks.

The bombshell news last week was that for years Yousef worked secretly, inside Hamas, from the West Bank, as an informant for the Israeli domestic security service, Shin Bet. That followed the bombshell news in 2008 that Yousef  had converted to Christianity.

Yousef, who left the West Bank and moved to the U.S. in 2007, has just published a memoir, “Son of Hamas” (as I write this, it had not yet appeared on the NY Times best seller list, but had already jumped to #8 on Amazon). In his book, he explains how he made his “unlikely journey.” It began when he realized at the age of 18 that Hamas itself was the cruelest oppressor of its own people. He began asking himself questions that must have taken incredible fortitude to dare think at all — in a setting where people suspected of collaborating with Israel have been horribly murdered and strung up in public by their own brethren. Yousef concluded that the best way to help his own people, the Palestinians, was to help the Israelis curb the terror and the violence. More on that in my column this week on Scion of Hamas, based on interviewing Yousef by phone, and reading his book.

For Yousef to speak out now, and tell his story — as he is doing, at risk of his life – must take incredible courage. He’s been interviewed on a number of TV news shows this week, and you can find a good sample here, in an interview he did Wednesday evening with David Asman on Foxbusiness News. Whether you are inclined to agree or disagree with Yousef’s conclusions about terror, religion, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and hopes for peace in the Middle East, he is worth paying attention to. Above all, it is worth reading his book. In realms where too often any trace of common sense or decency is subordinated to geopolitical jargon and hot-house diplo-acadamic absurdities, Yousef cuts through it to talk about some very real issues, and what he himself saw, experienced and understood. He’s a brave man to offer us his story. His book ought to be required reading in the State Department. And if President Barack Obama wants to better understand the quicksands of the Middle East, “Son of Hamas” is what belongs right now on his bedside table.

Dubai authorities have provided a terrific display of their surveillance abilities, with the video footage released last week of 11 alleged assassins now wanted for the Jan. 19 murder in a plush Dubai hotel room of a top Hamas terrorist, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh — who was a big player in smuggling arms from Iran to Gaza.

But why stop with releasing video of al-Mabhouh’s alleged assassins? As an offshore banking center and top trading partner for Iran, Dubai is a crossroads for all sorts of interesting characters — such as the late al-Mabhouh, and “members of his group,” whom Dubai authorities say he met with shortly before he was murdered. If surveillance in Dubai is that good, may we please see more? — starting with footage of al-Mabhouh himself, and those mysterious members of his “group.” Imagine the possibilities for a full-length feature film. More in my column this week for Forbes.com, on Video Killer Thriller in Dubai.

For folks terrified of warmer weather, the UN climate commissars sure do have a strange affinity for the balmy climes of Bali.

Recall that in December, 2007, as the common folk shivered in the wintry vicinity of the UN’s well-appointed offices in New York, Bonn and Geneva, a horde of UN climateers decamped to the far side of the globe for a fortnight of conferencing by the Indonesian beaches of Bali’s ritzy Nusa Dua resort (and convention center). There, up close and personal, they braved the preview of a world beset by warm temperatures and ocean waters, as you can see in this virtual tour of the adjacent beach resort — complete with its freshwater pool, beachside cocoons, seafood buffets and winding paths beneath the palm trees.

Now they’re at it again. The UN Environment Program, which is based in Nairobi, is convening a set of meetings this week – not in Nairobi, or New York, but at the same Bali beach resort (and convention center) where they sacrificed all that time for the greater good in 2007. Never mind the UN’s continuing campaign — in the face of its crumbling “climate science” — to restrict and control carbon emissions. Yet again, we are asked to believe the UN deserves special exemptions from its own preachings. Its conferees are jetting to Bali for the greater good of all the little folk, whose job is merely to pay the bills for such pleasures, and live with any resulting rationing and regulation. According to the Jakarta Post, some 1,500 people from 192 countries are expected to attend this shindig — where UNEP claims that envoys of some 140 governments will be present. The pre-session events (the UN goes in for a lot of those on Bali) have already begun.

This gathering is on a somewhat different theme from the grand “global warming” jamboree of 2007 (or the UN anti-corruption convention at the same Bali beach resort in 2008). The main topic of discussion this time is supposed to be the “sound management of hazardous chemicals and wastes.” Unlike carbon dioxide, that actually is worth worrying about. But do you trust this crowd to handle it? These folks are the from the same UNEP (launched and initially run by Maurice Strong, who went on to godfather the Kyoto Treaty) that has been one of the big purveyors of UN climate alarmism. This is the same UNEP which, together with the UN’s Geneva-based WMO (World Meteorological Organization) established the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which under the leadership of UN climate guru Rajendra Pachauri is now embattled over one revelation after another of missing data, faulty data and cooked results in its politicized findings of climate “consensus.”

Polar bears may be doing fine, but the climate commissars of the United Nations are feeling the heat, as their claims of scientific “consensus” melt under them. Now we have the first big UN climocrat to desert the cooling/warming/sinking ship. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, has announced he will be resigning as of July 1, 2010.

De Boer’s departure can’t come soon enough. For almost four years, this ramped-up Dutch bureaucrat has been one of the chief purveyors of climate alarmism, carbon-emitting his way around the globe from Bonn to Bali to Copenhagen, pushing UN plans for a global “climate change regime.”

Who is this guy? If you’ve tuned in to coverage of any of those grand UN pow-wows, where potentates gather around the cracked-crab buffets and Bali beach cabanas to determine your carbon rations, de Boer has been one of the stern faces at the podium — lecturing us all on the need to avert apocalypse by re-engineering the economy of the planet as he sees fit.

No one elected de Boer to his high-level perch. He was appointed in August, 2006 as one of the parting gifts to the world of the same former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who presided as the UN’s chief administrator of the giant scam known as Oil-for-Food. De Boer is neither a scientist nor an economist. His UN bio tells us he has a “technical degree in social work for the Netherlands.” Just before Annan exalted him to climate chief of the world, de Boer held the job of — are you impressed yet? — Director of International Affairs of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment of the Netherlands. (That’s especially rich in light of de Boer’s apparent obliviousness that UN warnings about the impending deluge of Holland were, like the warnings about melting Himalayan glaciers, somewhat over-excited).

Yes, you read that right. While beating, jailing, raping, torturing and murdering its dissidents, Iran’s Islamic regime is now campaigning for — what else? — a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. The Tehran government that brought us the killing last June of Neda Soltan now aspires to a new perch at the United Nations where the ayatollahs can wrap themselves in the UN flag while condemning the free world and redefining “human rights” to absolve or ignore their own atrocities.

New members of the 47-member UN Human Rights Council will be “elected” by secret ballot of the 192-member UN General Assembly this May. The seats, which carry terms of three years each, are allocated among regional groups. Iran is a member of the Asian group, which now has five candidates running for four seats: Malaysia, Maldives, Qatar, Thailand… and Iran. Which means Iran, with its oil-fueled, terror-backed clout, has a good chance of winning a seat already; and if any one of the other four contenders drops out, Iran could be an automatic shoe-in, if the UN General Assembly follows its usual practice under such circumstances of filling the open seats by acclamation.

More details on this process in my column this week for Forbes.com: “Don’t Let Iran On the Human Rights Council.”

The last time Iran tried this stunt was 2006, when John Bolton was serving as President George Bush’s ambassador to the UN. I had a chance to hear Bolton talk about that this past Thursday, when we were both interviewed about Iran on Fox Business TV by David Asman. Asman asked Bolton how Iran was kept off the Human Rights Council in 2006. Bolton answered that this had entailed a big effort by the entire State Department, reaching out within the UN itself and enlisting U.S. embassies around the world to make the case to America’s friends, allies (and, I would guess, acquaintances) that it would be immensely damaging to let Iran win a seat. Iran lost.