'Boycott them!' UN rapporteur slams companies aiding Israeli settlements

Click here for this in full @ RT.COM: http://rt.com/news/un-boycott-us-companies-israel-299/

The illegal Ulpana outpost, adjacent to the Beit El Jewish settlement. (AFP Photo / Gali Tibbon)

A special rapporteur for the UN’s Human Rights Council has called for a boycott on all companies involved with Israeli settlements until they adhere to international rights standards. Israel and the US have condemned the move.

In a report presented to the UN General Assembly, American professor Richard Falk said that many US, European and Mexican companies appeared to be violating international human rights and humanitarian laws. The companies are allegedly exploiting Palestinian resources, helping Israel construct illegal settlements and providing security for settlers.

Falk said the call for a boycott is an effort to take infractions of international law seriously. He said the pace of Israeli settlement building has accelerated and that Israel has ignored UN resolutions condemning the practice, so “there is a sense that what the UN says doesn't count.”

Although Falk admitted that further investigations were necessary to determine severity of the violations, the US and Israel were quick to condemn the report, accusing the UN special rapporteur of bias against Israel and calling for his removal.

Click here for this in full @ RT.COM: http://rt.com/news/un-boycott-us-companies-israel-299/

United States rejects the latest report by Mr. Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories

Click here to read this @ US Mission to the UN: http://usun.state.gov/briefing/statements/199727.htm

Statement on Richard Falk
Susan E. Rice
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
U.S. Mission to the United Nations
New York, NY
October 25, 2012


The United States rejects the latest report by Mr. Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories. His call for a boycott of private companies is irresponsible and unacceptable.

Throughout his tenure as Special Rapporteur, Mr. Falk has been highly biased and made offensive statements, including outrageous comments on the 9/11 attacks.

Mr. Falk’s recommendations do nothing to further a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and indeed poison the environment for peace. His continued service in the role of a UN Special Rapporteur is deeply regrettable and only damages the credibility of the UN.

Our Non-Entity U.N. Ambassador Perfect For Obama

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Rice: A weak U.S. voice at the United Nations. AP View Enlarged Image

Foreign Policy: Our current U.N. ambassador is like the schoolmarm who never gained control over her unruly class. Even when she does talk tough, it doesn't penetrate the noise.
Does anyone know who Ambassador Susan Rice is? Certainly no one remembers anything she has ever said during her more than 3-1/2 years as America's voice within that corrupt nest of vipers in the Turtle Bay section of New York City.
Last Wednesday, in a quintessential example, the ambassador complained that terror state Iran was not being helpful in its dealings with terror state Syria.

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Race 4 World Bank Prez: Jeffrey Sachs calls Amb. Susan Rice an "Obama insider" - forgetting he is a UN insider serving as Under-Secretary-General

Jeffrey D. Sachs ‏ @JeffDSachs

• · Open

@hlkalin So far this is still an insider's game. It needs to be opened up. Senator Kerry has taken himself off the list.

undpwatch ‏ @undpwatch

• Close

@JeffDSachs @hlkalin if u call @AmbassadorRice an insider - than u should accept u r @UN insider since u serve as #USG, right?#UNreform

The U.S. Needs the U.N., and the U.N. Needs the U.S.

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ON PARTNERSHIP FOR A SECURE AMERICA

This article authored by former Senator Alan Simpson originally appeared in the McClatchy Companynews service.

Jan. 12 marked the second anniversary of the horrific earthquake that ripped Haiti apart. While we quite properly remembered the unthinkable loss of Haitian lives that day, less well remembered were the deaths that same day of more than 100 U.N. officials in the collapse of the building that housed the headquarters of the U.N. mission in Haiti.

They were there in an effort to help the process of nation building in Haiti and to assist with humanitarian relief efforts there. Their deaths remind us that the United Nations and its staff members serve in many difficult places working on the most difficult issues. Their efforts serve us all.

Today’s national security challenges are global in nature. Threats like terrorism, nuclear proliferation and pandemic disease respect no borders. America, the most generous country in the world, must play its part in countering these challenges but, particularly in these times of increased austerity, we must have partners who will join us in this effort.

First and foremost, we need a strong, efficient, well-run United Nations that can expand our global reach. A strong United Nations can help provide that global reach and influence required in responding effectively to these threats, and also in preventing them from becoming major crises.

A truly unique body, the United Nations offers us the ability to communicate and collaborate with about 200 countries, our fellow members, on a breadth of issues.

Sometimes the messenger matters, and a messenger that represents the collective global community stands a better chance of persuading people to take action than one from any particular country, even our own. Unfortunately, there are members of Congress who would have us cut our support for the United Nations.

They mock the United Nations because we sometimes disagree with our colleague member states on some highly contentious issues. They forget that the U.N. Charter, a remarkable document, is largely influenced by American values. They choose to pick on an easy target for scorn, and they do so without proposing any reasonable alternatives. That represents short-sighted and misdirected thinking.

Whether providing famine relief, stanching nuclear proliferation, creating arms embargoes, blocking the travel and financial support of rogue actors, establishing global standards to prevent money laundering, or curbing the spread of pandemics like avian flu, the United Nations’ work enables the United States to reap real national security benefits that advance American interests and make us safer and stronger here at home.

The full range of U.N. agencies does the tough, thankless work frequently forgotten and left off the pages of our newspapers. Especially as we withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan we need to remember that it will be international organizations like the United Nations that will pick up a significant amount of the slack on political, humanitarian and development processes.

Without question our U.S. contributions to the United Nations must be judicious and prudent: accountability, transparency and effectiveness are essential for any organization, including the United Nations. At the same time, our ability to burden share with other nations helps defray costs, promote stability and enhance the impact of our resources. It is our greatest foreign policy “force multiplier.”

Withholding U.S. funding weakens both our influence and support for our national priorities, while strengthening the hands of our adversaries.

The United Nations is an imperfect and sometimes very frustrating institution. I can sympathize with those who wish to lash out when the United Nations falls short of our expectations and aspirations for it. But I cannot agree that we should reduce our support for it.

By actively using all of the real foreign policy, national security and economic tools at our disposal, we help develop the international knowledge, capability and capacity required to help address challenges that, if left to fester, only eventually land on our doorstep. Many of those tools are provided through our membership in the United Nations.

Support for the United Nations is one of the most cost-effective ways for the United States to address global challenges and leverage our global leadership. The United Nations needs assertive, supportive American leadership; America needs a strong, effective United Nations.

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InnerCityPress Exclusive: On Silva, Ambassadors Meet With UN Peacekeeping, Rice Says Concerned, Immunity Letter from USUN Surfaces

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

@InnerCityPress

UNITED NATIONS, February 17, updated -- Three weeks ago Inner City Press began asking the UN and then the US Mission to the UN how they could accept as a UN "Senior Adviser on Peacekeeping Operations" General Shavendra Silva, whose Division 58 is repeatedly named in connection with war crimes in Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Panel of Experts report on Sri Lanka.

On February 14, Bangledesh's Permanent Representative told Inner City Press he, India and Pakistan were telling Sri Lanka to "fix it."

On February 16, Pakistan's Permanent Representative confirmed this and said there was a meeting on February 17 on the topic. That meeting, of ambassadors with the two Under Secretaries General for peacekeeping, Inner City Press understands, took place Friday at 9:45 am.

At 10:30 am Friday, Inner City Press asked US Ambassador Susan Rice about a letter it found that that Russell F. Graham, Minister Counselor for Host Country Affairs at the US Mission to the UN, provided to Silva's lawyers to tell a US Federal Court that Silva, as Sri Lanka's Deputy Permanent Representative, has diplomatic immunity. On that basis, this case against Silva was dismissed.

Inner City Press is putting the letter online, here.

Ambassador Rice took the question, some from Inner City Press on Sudan, and said, "These are two different things. The State Department has to respond on immunity. He unfortunately or fortunately is an accredited diplomat."

Then, more generally on Silva, Rice told Inner City Press, "it's very concerning that someone with his background would be selected to serve on this advisory group. We have conveyed this to member states, as well as to the Secretariat. There are a lot of efforts underway to address [this], probably best not to be discussed publicly."

Moments later, another Security Council Permanent Representative approached Inner City Press and said, "on the Sri Lankan, you have done well." Inner City Press has sent questions to USGs Malcorra and Ladsous:

"Hello. Asking for an answer before noon: I understand that on the matter of Shavendra Silva, who is named in the S-G's Panel of Experts report on Sri Lanka as in charge of Division 48 which is described engaged in war crimes, ambassadors met with UN Peacekeeping today. I am asking you directly to confirm this, and to state the status of Mr. Silva on the Senior Advisory Group, and at this stage, your view."

At Friday's noon briefing, Inner City Press asked again, and Ban Ki-moon's Deputy Spokesman Eduardo Del Buey said he had no information, to "ask DPKO's spokesman."

Update of 6:34 pm: DPKO's spokesman has written in to note that in response to the request for a confirmation before the noon briefing, he "visited" and sent a text message. Noted. But the request was clear: confirm, which could be done even in a 160 character text message. The problem here is substantive: a UN Secretary General and Under Secretaries General who "have nothing to say" about an alleged war criminal -- or a commander of a division accused of war crimes - advising them.

Inner City Press reiterated, it is a question for Ban and his spokespeople, including because Ban's own High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote him on this topic - as she told Inner City Press at the General Assembly stakeout on February 13 -- and because Silva is in Ban's own report. We are still awaiting an on the record response, which has been re-requested from Ban's office as well as from USG Malcorra and her spokesman.

Update of 2:20 pm, Feb 17: Inner City Press has been sent this by the DPKO spokesman:

"I can confirm that DPKO-DFS leadership today facilitated a meeting with some Member States. As the spokesperson's office has previously said, the selection for this position on the Special Advisory Group is for the Member States. Since the selection has become known to the Secretariat, we have actively facilitated Member States in their discussions to consider this matter. We have nothing to say at this stage on our views of the membership of the Special Advisory Group."

What does it say about Ban's UN that it "has nothing to say" about the nomination as a "Senior Adviser" on Peacekeeping of a military commander named in Ban's own Panel of Experts report on Sri Lanka as engaged in the shelling of hospitals and presumptive execution of those seeking to surrender?

Prior to these developments, the Sri Lankan Mission's action was to send a letter of complaint to Inner City Press, sending a copy to Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky as well as to some in the UN press corps.

Inner City Press in less than 24 hours published and responded to the letter, citing only some of the many references to Silva's Division 58 in the report.

Watch this site.

Syria: the effectiveness of high diplomacy

Question: Can a country (i.e.: Syria) where United Nations is "successfully implementing development assistance" be referred to International Criminal Court ?

----

Today the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Madam Susan E. Rice, rightfully applauded and welcomed the briefing by the UN' High Commissioner for Human Rights on the appalling human rights crisis in Syria.

AmbassadorRice Ambassador Rice

The United States welcomes today's briefing by the #UN High Commissioner for #HumanRights on the appalling human rights crisis in #Syria.

1 hour ago

CLICK HERE FOR FULL AP STORY

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — More than 5,000 people have died in the nine-month-long Syrian uprising, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said Monday.

Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters Monday that she told Security Council members of the dramatic increase in deaths during an afternoon briefing.

The death toll used by the U.N. in recent weeks has been around 4,000.

Pillay said she recommended that the council refer Syria to the International Criminal Court, the permanent war crimes tribunal, for investigation of possible crimes against humanity.

Pillay said that at least 300 children are among the dead, and there are thousands of people in detention.

She noted that the last time she briefed the council on Syria, in August, the death toll was at about 2,000.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said Pillay's briefing "underscores the urgency of the present moment."

"Through condemnations issued by the U.N. General Assembly and Human Rights Council and bold steps taken by the Arab League and the Government of Turkey, international bodies are starting to match their severe disapproval of Syria's bloody crackdown with concrete steps to bring it to an end," Rice said. "It is past time for the U.N. Security Council to do the same."

CLICK HERE FOR FULL AP STORY

While the US Ambassador is pressuring the UN Security Council members for more decisive and effective actions agains the Syrian Regime, it seems that the US Mission to the UN along other Western Countries (Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark and Canada) are silent when it comes to the ongoing development agenda of United Nations in Syria, millions of dollars that are currently being spent by the UN Agencies thru sponsoring the "development plans" of the Bashar al-Assad Regime.

Please click here to view the website of the United Nations in Syria, and how Ban Ki-moon's representatives in Damascus loud their fruitful cooperation with the Regime.

$58 Million

UN Assistance in Syria

http://un.org.sy/index-en.php

How can a UN Human Rights Commissioner demand that al-Assad's Regime be referred to the International Criminal Court - while United Nations own agencies are doing business as usual inside Syria, and not only are lauding their "content for working with this Regime and the qualitative outcomes they are gaining in their daily work inside Syria" but the UN's own website in Syria calls their work inside that country a DEVELOPMENT AGENDA.

Why is not Madam Susan E. Rice of the United States of America, a member of the Executive Board of UNDP and other UN Agencies present in Syria, not demanding immediate withdrawal of all UN aid from that country?

How can United Nations and Ban Ki-moon certify that their aid and tax-payers dollars inside Syria are not diverted from the Regime ?

Joe "the plumber" Torsella gives hell to United Nations: calls for reality check in all UN budgets

Former USUN Amb. John Bolton one said: "If the UN lost 10 Floors it wouldn't make a bit of difference".

Yesterday at the first ever televised 5th committee meeting, the current USUN Amb. Joe "the plumber" Torsella, showed that Bolton aint got nothing on him.

These are some of the budget statements made by USUN's Joe "the plumber" :

But as we review this budget we also see, as I said here last month, that while the Secretary-General has led, not enough of the rest of us—both within the Organization and among the Member States—have followed. The innovations I just described have enabled the publishing section of DGACM to propose a reduction in its work force by 41 posts, for example; yet, the Organization as a whole is shrinking by just 44 net posts, a reduction of only four-tenths of one percent. And while we here debate that 0.4 percent, potential add-ons to this budget—both those that we know today, and those yet to be considered—mean that the Secretary-General’s commendable call for budget restraint could, if we are not disciplined and careful in our work here in this Committee, end in a budget that actually increases from the last biennial budget.

Our first and most urgent task is to set the United Nations on the path of real fiscal discipline in the 2012-13 budget. That means passing a budget with substantial and sustainable reductions. It means judging whether we’ve achieved real savings by using as our benchmark not a budget outline, but the expenses we approved during the previous period, the 2010-11 bienium. It means measuring all expenditures, including add-ons, in our definition of expenses for the 2012-13 period. And it means achieving savings that will recur, savings the ACABQ would call “significant and structural”.

Many Member States, governments, businesses and NGOs have implemented total or partial hiring freezes on vacancies resulting from attrition, and in these difficult times the United Nations should do the same. Moreover, posts that have been persistently vacant over long periods should be abolished. The disturbing trend toward upward re-classification of posts identified by ACABQ should be reversed: the budget before us proposes upward reclassification of 55 posts—more than double the 27 reclassifications contained in the proposed program budgets for the past three biennia combined. Few of these reclassifications should be approved. Furthermore, we call on the Secretariat to comprehensively review all current employee benefit programs and costs, including health care, pension, leave, and travel policies.

Our second task is to ensure that the budget we pass is in fact a binding budget, and prevents the United Nations from spending more than we actually approve this fall. We continue to be disappointed and concerned that every year Member States are presented a significant number of add-ons at considerable cost that in some cases are not mandated, in many cases can be foreseen, and in all cases should be better managed. Budgets are not suggestions. The United Nations must strictly adhere to the principles reflected in resolutions 41/213 and 42/211 that call for new proposals to be "budget neutral" or offset with savings within the approved budget. And we, as Member States, must ensure that the Secretary-General has the tools to enforce these policies.

We also continue to be concerned that the large additions to budget requests stemming from “re-costing.” While we recognize the organization needs some ability to protect itself from inflation and currency fluctuations, there are better ways to achieve that protection than passing a budget with blanks instead of numbers and regularly adding new funds to it. We continue to seek further details and analysis from the Secretariat—as soon as possible—on options, such as currency hedging, to deal with this issue. We should leave here with the confidence that we’ve approved a final budget, not a first draft.

As the United States has said before, the United Nations’s budget is too complex and opaque, and it is built around the wrong measures. Paradoxically, there is too much data, and too little useful information. Readers of United Nations budget documents, for example, will search in vain for the actual travel budget by department or the cost of employee healthcare. But they can easily find the precise number of policy papers issued by any number of the executive committees, as if the number of papers itself is a meaningful measure of accomplishment.

The budget in its current form of 37 different and partitioned sections would tie the hands of the best manager in the world. Our job is to set priorities, not to needlessly constrain the Secretary-General’s ability to operationally adapt, as changing circumstances and changing times demand, to meet the goals we set. If we are demanding more accountability for results from United Nations managers—as we should—we should also give them more flexibility to redeploy some resources within and among budget sections.

And finally, we need to reexamine how managers build the United Nations budget in the first place. It is striking that each budget begins with the prior budget’s appropriation. We are caught in a perpetual exercise of adding to the previous biennium’s budget appropriation with the assumption that all previous mandates should be met in the same way and at the same funding level and every new mandate requires new resources. This premise is flawed. The fundamental reality is that resources do not equal results. No organization can work effectively without prioritizing to bridge the gap between limited resources on the one hand and ambitious goals on the other. That’s a conversation held daily in most governments, businesses and families; it should be held more frequently here at the United Nations and in the Fifth Committee.

Three tasks. A 2012-13 budget that represents a significant and sustainable belt-tightening from 2010-2011. A 2012-13 budget that is in fact final, comprehensive, and stable for the full biennium. And reform of the budget process this year so that United Nations budgets in future years will be prepared, presented and debated very differently. If we do those three things, Mr. Chairman, we will indeed have seized this opportunity.

Even if all the above would have been a "orchestrated rhetoric" to slow down the US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and US House Republicans in the Committee on Foreign Affairs to pass a substantial budget cut on US fundings for the United Nations, the cat is out of the bag and won't be easy to put it back. Torsella has gone where no other US Ambassador has even dared before, and now the scrutiny of UN's budget will only increase and make the tenure of Ban Ki-moon's second term a living hell.

Who said Obama is not interested in transparency at the United Nations, should bite their tongues: Torsella becomes Ban Ki-moon's new headache @UN

US Ambassador on UN Reform, Joseph Torsella is the first in USUN history to ask for 5th Committee meetings to be televised.

In a letter to Kiyotaka Akasaka he writes:

In an effort to make the United Nations budgeting process more transparent to member states and individuals around the world who benefit ffrom the United Nations programs, we are requesting that Fifth Committee formal meetings be made public via live webcast or on-demand through a link on the Fifth Committee homepage and other General Assembly sessions.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THIS LETTER ON USUN WEBPAGE

But there is a catch in Torsella's historic call for transparency:

"we are requesting that Fifth Committee formal meetings be made public via live webcast"

at the United Nations there are at least 200 INFORMAL meetings at 5th Committee, in which FORMAL decision and voting takes place. There are only two or maximum three FORMAL meetings where participants (UN member states) agree on what was previously "negotiated and agreed in INFORMAL gatherings".

We are certain that UN will not say NO to Torsella, it would be like saying NO to Obama. But from now onward - we bet UN will have even less FORMAL gatherings and call for more INFORMAL meetings, most probably at the homes of various member states representatives.

NICE TRY...AT LEAST IS A BEGINNING!

An American Mayor asks for United Nations financial assistance

Click to see this story on Itemlive.com (Daily Item of Lynn, MA)


Lynn Mayor Judy Flanagan Kennedy at the Daily Item.

(Item Photo / Owen O'Rourke)Mayor seeking UN aid for immigrantsOriginally Published on Monday, October 17, 2011By Chris Stevens / The Daily Item

LYNN - Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy is planning to head to Washington to ask the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees why exactly it has made Lynn a haven city for immigrants and how it plans to help.

“It is our plan to get a delegation together with representatives from the School Department, the Police Department and the Housing Authority, to go down and say, ‘if you’re going to be placing people here you’ve got to help us out financially or stop placing people here,’” Kennedy said during a recent editorial board interview with The Daily Item.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established in 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly and its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. Kennedy discussed the ever-growing number of immigrants — legal and illegal — in the city during the interview.

The flood of immigrants into Lynn is taking its toll on the city and in particular on the schools, Kennedy said.

She estimates there have been 819 new students that have moved into the district since June. She said she would never deny any student the right to an education, but she also called the influx “a huge burden” on the district.

Kennedy was quick to note that Lynn has always been a welcoming city and a city of immigrants, but said that status is getting more and more expensive.

Some students come from tribes that have no written language, others have never been in a formal school setting, she said. A program was developed on the high school level to give older students that have never set foot in a school building a crash course in high school life. Programs such as that cost money, Kennedy noted.

“You’re not going to find programs like that in Lincoln or Sudbury,” she said. “You’re only going to find those kinds of problems in big urban districts.”

It was School Committee members John Ford and Rick Starbard who, Kennedy said, came to her and essentially said, “we have to stop this.”

“A generation or two or three ago, when my grandparents came here, it was learn English or get out of the way,” she said. “Now the city has so many mandates it’s become a financial burden.”

The financial burdens in the School Department don’t end with immigrants however. Kennedy said the district has also struggled to keep up with the federal No Child Left Behind act, which placed a number of unfunded or partially funded mandates on communities under the auspices of providing every student with an education. Like the immigrant issue, Kennedy said NCLB puts an undue burden on urban districts like Lynn.

“Under the law we are responsible for half of a (homeless) child’s transportation cost to and from school if their last known home was in Lynn,” she said. “They don’t even have to live here now.”

Kennedy said the district is currently paying $25,000 for a child who lives in Newburyport and goes to school in a nearby community, only because the child’s last known home address was Lynn.

She said she also just signed a contract for an Special Education Individual Education Plan (IEP) that will cost the community $308,000 per year.

“And that’s for one child,” she said. “SPED (Special Education) transportation cost is 25 percent of the school’s non-salary budget.”

Kennedy however did have some good news regarding the city.

She swore in three new firefighters Tuesday and a grant could put one school resource officers in each of the three middle schools before the end of the year. The Department of Public works received $305,000 from Kennedy specifically to purchase new snow plowing equipment in order to be ready for the coming winter.

“We have a 1962 (model year) grader that we’re using and only two people in the city know how to operate it,” she said with a laugh. “We have to bring them out of retirement to use it.”

Kennedy also said she is committed to installing air conditioning in City Hall’s Veterans Memorial Auditorium.

“A grant for the air conditioning is in the hands of the Massachusetts Cultural Council and I’m pretty confident we’ll get it,” she said. “It will probably require matching funds of around $400,000 but we have that.”

Kennedy said she would use a portion of the $7.4 million in free cash she has saved to match the grant. If the grant is denied, she said she will pay for the entire $750,000, the estimated cost, through the free cash account.

Happy with the growing number of bookings for the auditorium and that it is turning a profit, Kennedy said, “I am committed to doing this.”

Along with cooling off the auditorium, Kennedy said she is also exploring a design that could allow for air conditioning inside City Hall offices as well. One particular plan would add duct work that would branch off the auditorium when there’s no shows going on and into City Hall offices. Kennedy said the idea is that when the auditorium isn’t being used, a switch could be thrown that would close off the air ducts into the auditorium and force the cold air into City Hall offices instead.

“It’s just a theory,” she said. “But it’s worth looking into.”

Kennedy also touched upon the two latest issues affecting City Hall, a call by City Councilor Daniel Cahill to abolish the Off-Street Parking Commission an revelation by an independent auditor that three pension accounts have been overpaid by a total of $42,000.

Kennedy said she still supports Parking Director Jay Fenton’s reorganization of his office that saved the city $26,000 and a position despite the fact the savings was accompanied by three healthy raises for the remaining employees.

“Anything that saves the city $26,000 and a body,” she said.

Kennedy pointed out that eliminating a position goes further than saving a salary, it also saves the city on health insurance and pension payments.

The question of sending a home rule petition to the legislature to abolish the commission was tabled during Tuesday’s City Council hearing, but Kennedy said she would hear the council out on the matter.

When asked who might take the fall for the pension overpayments, Kennedy said “It really depends on where we point the finger.”

However, she also said it’s too early to tell where the blame will be laid because it’s yet to be determined who made the error, the city treasurer, comptroller or Retirement Board.

She said she recently hired A.J. Saing as her Southeast Asian liaison, but he is only part time in large part, she said, because the “we can’t afford to keep bringing bodies in.”

Two years into her term Kennedy said she feels she has done much of what she set out to do and when asked if she planned to run for reelection in 2013 she laughed.

“Too early to tell,” she said before adding, “if I’m having as much fun (in two years) as I’m having now — absolutely.”