Turtle Swamp
“You’re going to see a change in the way we do business,” Ms. Haley said. “Our goal with the administration is to show value at the U.N., and the way we’ll show value is to show our strength, show our voice, have the backs of our allies and make sure our allies have our back as well.”
“For those who don’t have our back,” she added, “we’re taking names; we will make points to respond to that accordingly.”
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
All the right people are beginning to ask:
Congress is already setting the stage to cut off U.S. funding to the United Nations in the wake of a contested vote last week in which the Obama administration permitted an anti-Israel resolution to win overwhelming approval, according to congressional leaders, who told the Washington Free Beacon that the current administration is already plotting to take further action against the Jewish state before vacating office.
Other punitive actions by Congress could include expelling Palestinian diplomats from U.S. soil and scaling back ties with foreign nations that voted in favor of the controversial measure, according to multiple sources who spoke to the Free Beacon about the situation both on and off the record.
More.
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
It will go down as one of the great failures of the Harper government that they did not resign Canada’s membership in the United Nations when they had the chance.
Furious Israeli politicians accused the UN’s cultural arm of anti-Semitism Thursday in the wake of a resolution approved by UNESCO that erases the Jewish connection the Jerusalem holy sites.
Lawmakers from both the right and left of the political spectrum said the decision, which refers to the Temple Mount and Western Wall only by their Muslim names and condemns Israel as “the occupying power” for various actions taken in both places, was ill-befitting of UNESCO.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision “absurd,” while President Reuven Rivlin called it an “embarrassment” for UNESCO. The Executive Board of UNESCO is next week set to approve the resolution, which passed Thursday at the committee stage.
Culture Minister Miri Regev slammed the resolution as “shameful and anti-Semitic,” and Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel called for Israel to increase the Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, a flashpoint site governed by a tense status quo, in response.
“To say that Israel has no link to the Temple Mount is like saying that China has no link to the Great Wall or that Egypt has no connection to the Pyramids,” Netanyahu said, adding that “with this absurd decision UNESCO has lost what little legitimacy it still had.”
Why Is There Always A Big Screen TV?
In Canada, the outcome of adopting the UN declaration may be less bloody, but it surely won’t be free from conflict. Until the Trudeau government came along, Ottawa’s major concern about endorsing the declaration was that it could be seen as giving First Nations (and possibly Métis people) the right to veto any development that affects them. Given how difficult it already is for ordinary industrial projects to navigate the objections of special interest groups, including First Nations, that’s an especially well-founded concern. The prime minister has already frustrated the energy sector by adding extra complications to the federal review process to indulge the green lobby. By endorsing the UN’s declaration, he may enhance his personal brand of being soft on issues where the Tories came off steely, but he will also certainly make it more difficult to get things built in this country.
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
What caused Haiti’s cholera epidemic? The CDC museum knows but won’t say.
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
The bureaucrats are always the last to know;
Six years ago, I became an assistant secretary general, posted to the headquarters in New York. I was no stranger to red tape, but I was unprepared for the blur of Orwellian admonitions and Carrollian logic that govern the place. If you locked a team of evil geniuses in a laboratory, they could not design a bureaucracy so maddeningly complex, requiring so much effort but in the end incapable of delivering the intended result. The system is a black hole into which disappear countless tax dollars and human aspirations, never to be seen again.
He leaves the rapes and killings for further on down the column.
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
You remember UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, a.k.a. the UN outfit with schools in Gaza that have doubled as rocket depots for terrorists attacking Israel. Opened in 1950 as a temporary jobs and aid program for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has become an ever-expanding fixture of the UN and the Middle East, a de facto patron of Hamas in Gaza, and welfare-dispenser for what is today a population of some 5 million “registered Palestinian refugees” — a project that down the generations has helped foster both a Palestinian culture of grievance and dependency, and money and jobs for UNRWA itself. At the UN, all other refugees come under the aegis of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which seeks to resettle them. Only the Palestinians have a dedicated agency that has turned refugee status into a bizarre form of hereditary entitlement.
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
UN Watch’s Top 10 Worst U.N. Decisions of 2015
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US quietly maneuvers to cut UN dues
There is cautious hope among diplomats that the U.S. can chip away at least marginally at the U.N.’s “scale of assessments”– a dues system loaded in favor of many poor and not-so-poor countries that pay less than their fair share, and saddle the small number of rich countries — especially the U.S. — with the difference.
h/t peterj
Emulating A Corrupt, Third World Dictator To The End
Ding, dong. “There were no immediate details about where and when Strong died.”
Say, @SusanDelacourt – can you point me to obit mentioning Strong's ties to UN Oil For Food corruption scandal? #journalism #cdnpoli
— Katewerk (@katewerk) November 29, 2015
Background here.
Capitalist dogs
and fermented cabbage.
I wonder if beer and pizza count as an “intangible cultural heritage”.
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history,” Figueres, who heads up the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters in February.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution,” Figueres said.
It could work.
h/t Robert of Ottawa
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
The United Nations Foundation created by billionaire Ted Turner, along with a branch of media giant Thomson Reuters, is starting to train a squadron of journalists and subsidize media content in 33 countries–including the U.S. and Britain–in a planned $6 million effort to popularize the bulky and sweeping U.N.-sponsored Sustainable Development Goals, prior to a global U.N. summit this September. where U.N. organizers hope they will be endorsed by world leaders.
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
Defund this monkey cage: The UN Just Condemned a Single Nation for Women’s Rights Violations. Can You Guess Which One?
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
Oh, NOW they’re concerned. The U.N.’s World Food Program says it is “extremely concerned” about images circulating on social media showing Islamic State labels affixed to its food aid boxes in Syria.
Flashback: Evidence of UNIFIL’s Assistance to Hezbollah
Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?
The head of the United Nations inquiry into the 2014 Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas announced on Monday that he was stepping down.
Canadian international law professor William Schabas sent a letter to the UN commission, citing Israeli allegations of bias over consulting work he did for the Palestine Liberation Organization, Reuters reported.
Via UN Watch with the rest of the story.
Why did William Schabas finally step down as chair of the UN inquiry on Gaza?
The latest revelation that he was paid by the PLO for legal advice in 2012 was the last straw, but the decision came in wake of a sustained campaign by UN Watch starting from the day of his appointment, which included videos of Schabas calling for the indictment of Israeli leaders, a formal UN Watch legal brief demanding his recusal that was submitted to the UN in an official filing, and UN Watch op-eds urging legal scholars to speak out against the absurd appointment of Schabas. Many did so.