This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: United Nations

  • Nikki Haley’s letter of resignation to President Trump

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    US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, surprised the nation with her intention to step down from that position and return to her South Carolina home yesterday.

    Haley told reporters she will not run for office in 2020 and instead campaign for the president, in an attempt to quash speculation that she might chart her own political course challenging him.

    “I will say this for all of you that are going to ask about 2020 — no, I am not running for 2020,” the ambassador told reporters. “I can promise you what I will be doing is campaigning for this one. So I look forward to supporting the president in the next election.”

    Her letter:

    October 3, 2018

    Dear Mr. President: It has been an immense honor to serve our country in your Administration. I cannot thank you enough for giving me this opportunity.

    You will recall that when you offered me the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations in November 2016, I accepted the offer based on some conditions. Those conditions included serving in your Cabinet and on the National Security Council and being free to speak my mind on the issues of the day. You made those commitments and you have absolutely kept them all. For that too, I will always be grateful.

    We achieved great successes at the UN. We passed the toughest sanctions against any country in a generation, pressuring North Korea toward denuclearization. We passed an arms embargo on South Sudan that will help reduce violence and hopefully bring peace to that troubled country. We stood up for our ally Israel and began to roll back the UN’s relentless bias against her. We reformed UN operations and saved over $1.3 billion. We spoke out resolutely against dictatorships in Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and yes, Russia. Through it all, we stood strong for American values and interests, always placing America first. I am proud of our record.

    As a strong supporter of term limits, I have long believed that rotation in office benefits the public. Between the UN Ambassadorship and serving in the South Carolina Governorship and General Assembly, I have been in public office for fourteen straight years. As a businessman, I expect you will appreciate my sense that returning from government to the private sector is not a step down but a step up.

    Accordingly, I am resigning my position. To give you time to select a replacement, and to give the Senate time to consider your selection, I am prepared to continue to serve until January 2019.

    At that point, I will once again become a private citizen. I expect to continue to speak out from time to time on important public policy matters, but I will surely not be a candidate for any office in 2020. As a private citizen, I look forward to supporting your re-election as President, and supporting the policies that will continue to move our great country toward even greater heights.

    With best wishes and deep gratitude,

    Nikki Haley

    A class act all the way, she will be greatly missed. Right up until we see a Pense / Haley ticket in 2024.

    This article may be viewed at Fox News

  • Nikki Haley ‘taking names’ at the UN

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    Fox News reports former South Carolina Governor and current American Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned when she took the office she’d be “taking names” of countries that do not have “our back.” Now, a recently released State Department report on voting records at the UN tells her who exactly are America’s friends and foes.

    The report revealed that U.N. members voted with the United States only 31 percent of the time last year– down 10 percent from last year. Haley stated this is not an “acceptable return” on the United States’ investment and suggested this could factor in future foreign aid decisions.

    Haley emphasized that U.S. taxpayers pay for 22 percent of the U.N. budget – more, she said, than the next three highest donor nations combined. Haley noted that the U.S. cares more about “being right than popular and are once again standing up for our interests and values” but said:

    “Either way, this is not an acceptable return on our investment. When we arrived at the UN last year, we said we would be taking names, and this list of voting records speaks for itself. President Trump wants to ensure that our foreign assistance dollars – the most generous in the world – always serve American interests, and we look forward to helping him see that the American people are no longer taken for granted.”

    According to the report, the country that voted least with the U.S. was Zimbabwe – having voted zero times with America. According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) foreign aid explorer website, Zimbabwe received $58 million in aid for this year.

    Rounding out the bottom 10 nations not aligned with the U.S. were: Burundi, which received $2.9 million in U.S. aid; Iran (no U.S. aid); Syria ($72 million); Venezuela ($230,000); North Korea (no U.S. aid); Turkmenistan ($200,000); Cuba ($115,000); Bolivia ($115,000); and South Africa ($100 million). All figures are from the USAID explorer website.

    According to the report, the country that voted most with the United States in the U.N. General Assembly was Israel. The other nine on the top 10 list were U.S. allies Micronesia, Canada, Marshall Islands, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Palau, Ukraine and the Czech Republic.

    Martin Edwards, a professor at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations in New Jersey, told Fox News that the report provided a “nice grandstanding tactic” for Haley but said it raised more questions than answers.

    “It’s unclear what this will mean for current foreign aid recipients — are we really going to give less humanitarian aid to South Sudan? How does that advance our interests?” he said.”

    Well Martin, other than enriching corrupt bureaucrats, exactly what are our interests in South Sudan, and why should we provide them, or any of the other’s on the hit list, with hard earned American tax dollars?

  • Haley; US negotiated UN budget cut

    Haley; US negotiated UN budget cut

    According to the Associated Press, US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikky Haley, claims that the US has negotiated a nearly $300 million cut to the UN’s operating budget.

    U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said that the “inefficiency and overspending” of the organization is well-known, and she would not let “the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of.”

    She also said that while the mission was pleased with the results of budget negotiations, it would continue to “look at ways to increase the U.N.’s efficiency? while protecting our interests.”

    It’s a drop in bucket, but it’s a good start. I guess it’s $300 million dollars that can be put towards the gloom and doom domestic income tax cuts. Those countries that voted against US policy in Jerusalem should be worried about their own tin cups.

  • UN General Assembly votes to condemn US Law

    Apparently, there was a non-binding vote in the UN’s General Assembly to condemn President Trump’s decision to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Despite UN Ambassador Nikky Haley’s warning that nations which voted against the US risk losing taxpayer dollars in aid, 128 nations voted against the US, 9 voted with us and 35 abstained from voting.

    Haley responded;

    “The United States will remember this day,” US Ambassador Nikki Haley told the assembly.

    “America will put our embassy in Jerusalem,” Haley said. “No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that.

    “But this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN,” she said.

    “When we make generous contributions to the UN we also have a legitimate expectation that our goodwill is recognized and respected.”

    Not surprisingly, those who brought this matter to the General Assembly are calling it “bullying”. Think about it – we are the largest contributor to the UN’s day-to-day operations, the UN won’t condemn Iran’s human rights violations, they have Venezuela and Cuba on their Human Rights Council, but we’re bullying them when we threaten to withhold taxpayer funds if they vote against us for enforcing our own laws.

    Yes, Congress overwhelmingly voted to move the embassy back in 1995, the three presidents who should have moved it, didn’t bother. From the Washington Post;

    [In October, 1995] the House and Senate passed a bill called the “Jerusalem Embassy Act,” which formally recognized the city as the country’s capital and called for the U.S. Embassy in Israel to be moved there from Tel Aviv by 1999. Support for the bill was overwhelming. It passed the Senate by a 93 to 5 vote, with four Republicans and one Democrat voting no. It passed the House 374 to 37, with 153 Democrats joining most of the new Republican majority that had swept into power in 1994.

    Maybe the UN should invade Chicago or something to show that they mean business. That is, if they can afford the paper to write us a letter after they get their budget cut. We could probably pay off our national debt soon with money we save from not paying the UN and supporting armies around the world of ingrates.

  • UN agency helps to arm North Korea

    UN agency helps to arm North Korea

    Fox News busted the United Nations agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as they approved the process for North Korea to manufacture sodium cyanide — a chemical used to make the nerve gas Tabun.

    The World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, has made no mention of the application to the Security Council committee monitoring North Korea sanctions, nor to the U.N. Panel of Experts that reports sanctions violations to the committee, even while concerns about North Korean weapons of mass destruction, and the willingness to use them, have been on a steep upward spiral.

    Fox News told both U.N. bodies of the patent application for the first time late last week, after examining the application file on a publicly available WIPO internal website.

    […]

    [T]he U.N. sanctions committee decided that the world organization’s porous restrictions had not been violated, while also noting WIPO’s defense that as an international organization, it was not subject to the rules aimed at its own member states.

    A 2006 Security Council resolution forbids any government from trading in the chemical with the hermit kingdom, but WIPO was completely within their rights to allow the DPRK to manufacture it themselves. Nice. Well, at least Fox is looking out for us.

  • “Blue helmets” to protect heritage sites from ISIS

    “Blue helmets” to protect heritage sites from ISIS

    AFP reports that the United Nations have voted to deploy peacekeeping forces known as Blue Helmets to defend world heritage sites from attacks by ISIS terrorists.

    “[United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)] has said yes to the Cultural Blue Helmets,” Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said in a statement, adding that 53 countries voted in favour after the destruction of sites including Palmyra in Syria by the Islamic State group.

    “Faced with IS terrorist attacks and the terrible images of Palmyra, the international community cannot stand back and watch,” he said, adding that the permanent members of the security council had supported the idea.

    […]

    The idea is aimed at “important sites at risk from terrorist attacks, or in war zones, or zones hit by natural disasters, where the international community will be able to send Cultural Blue Helmets to protect them or defend them before they can be destroyed”.

    I’m sure they’ll have no problem finding volunteers. Those blue helmets make them easy targets for any terrorist who wants to make a name for himself. Remember last year when Syrian rebels kidnapped some Fijian and Filipino peacekeepers in the Golan Heights? The UN told them to surrender instead of fighting back. Luckily they all made it back alive…but they weren’t held by ISIS. ISIS likes to make beheading videos. The UN has a habit of deploying Peacekeepers without any plan to support them when they get caught in the shit.

  • Peacekeeper Fijians released

    Peacekeeper Fijians released

    Fijians

    Two weeks ago, 45 Fijian Peacekeepers under control of the UN were captured by al-Qaeda Syrian rebels. Yesterday they were finally released, according to the Associated Press;

    Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said it played a role in winning the release of the peacekeepers through mediation. Qatar said it became involved at at Fiji’s request. The official Qatar News Agency reported late Thursday that the tiny Arab Gulf emirate had “succeeded in the release of the Fijian soldiers.”

    […]

    At U.N. headquarters, the Fijians’ release was greeted with relief and renewed indignation.

    Fiji’s U.N. Mission tweeted a photo of diplomats celebrating with their thumbs up, reading: “Free at last! Thumbs up from the Fiji Permanent Mission in New York to our 45 brave Fijian UNDOF peacekeepers.”

    Jordan’s U.N. Ambassador Dina Kawar said the idea of peacekeepers being taken hostage “is just impossible to accept because it will happen more and more, and that will make countries hesitant about sending their armies, so we were very happy.”

    Yeah, it sounds like someone paid a ransom, so that should stop the practice.

    By the way, no Filipino peacekeepers were released, mostly because the Filipinos didn’t throw down their weapons like they were ordered to do by their UN commander. The UN refutes that;

    In a press briefing in New York on Wednesday, Hervé Ladsous, UN Under Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, belied the claims of the Filipino peacekeepers that they were ordered by their commander, Lt. Gen. Iqbal Singh Singha, to surrender their arms to the rebels last week.

    Asked what order was given to the Filipinos, Ladsous replied, “Never to hand over weapons.”

    The order was simply “not to shoot,” he said.

    Yeah, that’s so different.

  • Pentagon: Maybe the Yazidis don’t need rescuing after all

    Fox News reports that the Pentagon says that when there were boots on the ground on Mount Sanjar, they discovered that there are far fewer Yazidis than they initially thought, so maybe they don’t need to be rescued;

    Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said late Wednesday that a team of military personnel had “assessed that there are far fewer Yazidis there than previously feared” and those who remain are “in better condition than previously believed and continue to have access to the food and water we dropped.”

    As a result, Kirby said, officials had “determined that an evacuation mission is far less likely.”

    Jennifer Griffin, on the Fox News broadcast channel said that the Pentagon’s big problem was that the folks in Iraq didn’t know where they could put the Yazidis once they rescued them. I have trouble believing that those folks on Mount Sanjar were facing death a few hours ago and now suddenly, they’re fine. Maybe if the President spends some more time on vacation, all of the world’s problems will resolve themselves.

    BBC says;

    US officials suggested that air-strikes in the region had created an escape route for thousands, who had managed to leave the mountain over the past few nights, helped by Kurdish fighters.

    Meanwhile, according to al Jazeera, the united nations has declared a state of emergency in Iraq because of 400,000 refugees and fighting has erupted today in Fallujah, once again.

    Fighting erupted early on Thursday in the rebel-held city of Fallujah, about 65km west of Baghdad.

    The clashes on the city’s northern outskirts killed four children, along with a woman and at least 10 fighters, said Fallujah hospital director Ahmed Shami. Fallujah has been in the hands of the Islamic State since early January, when the group seized much of Western Anbar province along with parts of the provincial capital of Ramadi.

    The fighting came as the UN declared the situation in Iraq a “Level 3 Emergency” – a development that will trigger additional goods, funds and assets to respond to the needs of the displaced, said UN special representative Nickolay Mladenov, pointing to the “scale and complexity of the current humanitarian catastrophe.”

    So, the UN is on the job. We can all relax now.