The Rosett Report: The United Nations In a Snapshot

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.com (Click here to read this @The Rosett Report)

Just how anti-American is the United Nations? Huge issues abound, but sometimes it’s most easily summed up by the details. For instance, as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struts the stage this week at the UN General Assembly’s annual opening in New York, the web site of the General Assembly is featuring a rotating display of photos, showing familiar scenes at the UN. Among them is a photo of the General Assembly voting board — the photo you see copied below. It shows the upper portion of the board, on which a vote has just been tallied; green for yes and red for no. If you look a little closer, you’ll notice that the vote is a staggering 187 in favor, two against, with three abstaining. Almost anytime you see that kind of configuration at the UN — an overwhelming number voting one way, and one or two voting the other —  it’s a good bet that one of those two is the United States. The other is probably Israel.

What was the General Assembly voting on? The caption doesn’t say. But I think it’s a very good guess that this photo shows the tally for the Oct., 2010 UN vote calling for an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba, in which the U.S. and Israel were the only two voting against. Does the UN General Assembly devote similar fervor to addressing the continuing human rights violations on Cuba, or Cuba’s long practice of making common cause with some of the worst dictatorships on the planet? No way. Cuba is one of the UN General Assembly’s favorite mascots, with a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, and a chronically out-sized role on assorted UN governing boards. No matter what your opinion about the U.S. embargo on Cuba, the fact is, when the officialdom of the current General Assembly went looking for a handful of photos to illustrate the GA web site, what emerged was a snapshot that for almost any UN insider would serve as an instant reminder of just how inconsequential America’s vote has become in the General Assembly — the General Assembly that routinely votes the other way, while raking in 22% of its budget courtesy of American taxpayers.

FoxNews: 19,000 killed so far in Syria and United Nations (UNDP) wants instead to legalise prostitution (sex more important than people @UN)

Click here for Fox News story

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1756285638001/

PJMEDIA-Rosett Report: Guess Who’s Buying Flowers for Pyongyang (With Photos)

CLICK HERE FOR CLAUDIA ROSETT STORY ON PJMEDIA.COM

At the best of times, North Korea’s regime ranks among the most vile on the planet, and this past week has not been the best of times. The totalitarian Kim dynasty carries on, and on, from grandfather to father to son — a brutal regime sustained by proliferation, extortion, and counterfeiting rackets abroad, and grotesque repression at home. This is the regime that targeted an estimated one million or more North Koreans for death by famine in the 1990s, and continues to eradicate dissent by means of such atrocities as incarcerating hundreds of thousands of people in Stalinist prison camps, as described in the recently updated report on “The Hidden Gulag.”

With the late Kim Jong Il now exalted as “general secretary for eternity,” his son, new ruler Kim Jong Un, has just reaffirmed the regime’s “military first” policy, and celebrated the advent of the 100th birthday of Kim Junior’s dead totalitarian grandfather, Kim Il Sung, by conducting a ballistic missile test — which North Korea’s propaganda organs dutifully translated for us as being an attempted satellite launch. There are signs that another North Korean nuclear test may be right around the bend, and this one may be uranium-based, which would be potentially more helpful to North Korea’s business pals in Iran than North Korea’s previous plutonium-based tests, in 2006 and 2009. North Korea’s regime collaborates with Syria and Iran on weapons development. And for its record of kidnapping alone — many of its victims never returned or even fully accounted for — North Korea deserves to be put back on the U.S. government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Yet, even beyond Tehran and Damascus, Pyongyang’s regime has its fans, and receives its share of tribute, including floral wreaths and letters, which the state’s Korean Central News Agency loves to report. For instance, KCNA tells us this week that the communist parties of Peru and Norway sent delegates, bearing gifts, to celebrate the 100th birthday of Kim Il Sung (what the gifts are, KCNA does not explain).

Curious to see who else was sending tribute to the Kim dynasty during this fraught week, I was scrolling through the KCNA site, and lo! What to my wondering eyes should appear but a KCNA report that on Friday — the same day as the missile test (which United Nations sanctions forbid) — “The dear respected Kim Jong Un received congratulatory letters from the offices of the World Food Programme and the United Nations Development Programme.”

Congratulatory letters? For what?

KCNA does not elaborate. To be fair, we can reasonably assume that the World Food Program and UNDP were not congratulating Kim on the missile launch (which was in any event not a successful launch, though such are the hazards of missile tests). And, of course, this is a report from KCNA, a state propaganda organ, prone to such paroxysms as its description Friday of Kim Jong Un as “a great statesman of literary and military accomplishments, who is possessed of outstanding wisdom, distinguished leadership ability, matchless pluck and noble revolutionary comradeship.” It would be unwise to trust entirely to KCNA’s reports.

Except I can find no account of either the World Food Program or the UNDP hustling to deny any such congratulatory letters. If they would like to do so, I would cheerfully write that up. In the meantime, here they are, both these august UN agencies, described by KCNA as orbiting the firmament of Kim Jong Un, the man of matchless pluck and noble revolutionary comradeship. Were they perhaps congratulating him on pioneering a third generation of totalitarian dynastic rule in North Korea? Or applauding the accomplishments of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, in founding this family enterprise?

It gets worse. Scrolling further down the KCNA roster of Friday’s doings in North Korea, there’s a more detailed account of UNDP “staff members” laying “a floral basket before the equestrian statues of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il.” Apparently, after the UNDP staffers laid the floral basket before the statues of the two dead totalitarians, they “paid tribute,” according to KCNA.

Tribute? What does that mean? Did they bow? Toss coins? Drop off a few dual-use items, of the kind the UNDP got caught in 2007 importing into North Korea? Both these UN outfits have a troubling record in North Korea. The UNDP pandered so shamelessly to Kim Jong Il — dispensing cash, buying him dual-use equipment, and storing counterfeit U.S. $100 banknotes in its office safe — that in 2007 it was forced by the revelations of the Cash-for-Kim scandalto close its Pyongyang office for a while. And according to a report this past December by George Russell of Fox News, the World Food Program “may be helping the Kim regime stay afloat” — allowing the North Korean regime to insert itself as overpaid middleman in the supply chain of relief cargoes, with numerous “lapses” and “anomalies” turning up once the aid arrives in North Korea.

Whatever the World Food Program and the UNDP just wrote, or did, to congratulate Kim Jong Un, or pay tribute to his monstrous ancestors, one might have hoped the UN officials running these organization would have more sense. No doubt while operating in North Korea the UN comes under constant pressure from the regime to bow down, pay tribute, and thank the Kim dynasty for the privilege of sending other people’s money and goods its way. But surely we should also expect from the UN at least some slight grip on a basic moral compass.

For that matter, both the World Food Program and the UNDP are entrusted with taxpayer dollars meant to provide resources for helping hungry and impoverished North Koreans — not to be spent buying flowers and writing letters to glorify mass-murdering tyrants. Would the UN condone sending flowers to honor the memory of Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao?

And if the KCNA reports were dead wrong, if the World Food Program sent no such letter, if the UNDP did not purchase flowers and pay tribute to Kim Il Sung, it should not require the questions of a reporter to persuade them to issue a public denial of these KCNA stories. They should be calling press conferences at their headquarters, in Rome and New York, to explain they would never engage in such acts. Swathed as they are in diplomatic immunity, they might even try calling a press conference to this effect in Pyongyang — provided they’re not too busy penning love notes and buying bouquets for this third generation military-first regime still starving its people while readying its next nuclear test.

The Rosett Report: From UN Immunity to License to Defraud

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One of the most pernicious features of the United Nations is its diplomatic immunity. This is what lets the UN and its floating world of assemblies, agencies, diplomats and international staff get away with everything from running up$18 million in Manhattan parking tickets, to indulging in corruption, waste and abuse that carries no real penalty, even when outed in the press, or exposed in congressional hearings. When private companies embezzle millions, it’s a reasonable bet — at least in the U.S. — that someone will face charges, and maybe do jail time. When more than half a dozen major UN agencies involved in the UN’s Oil-for-Food program in Iraq stuffed their own administrative coffers with hundreds of millions of dollars meant to buy relief supplies such as medicine and baby milk, no one faced prosecution. The worst they got was an official tut-tut, and instructions for the agencies — including, for instance, UNICEF, the World Food Program and the UN Development Program — to cough up a small portion of the money.

True, diplomatic immunity has a time-honored place in important matters of actual diplomacy (though at the UN, even that devolves quickly to such outrages as the annual visits of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Manhattan). But a great many of the more reasonable-sounding aspects of the UN have been over-run over the years by the astounding spread and sprawl of its globe-girdling bureaucracy. What began as a talking shop for diplomats in 1945 is by now a neo-colonial global empire, with its own envoys, outposts, and amorphous initiatives, moving money, personnel and equipment across borders, spending well over $30 billion per year of other people’s money — and draped in immunity. No big surprise that the UN is a chronic incubator of waste, fraud and abuse, which periodically erupts into scandal when details seep out. Yet pathetically little actually gets done about it, and very rarely is anyone punished.

All this makes UN-style immunity a highly attractive commodity. It’s a de facto license to fiddle and defraud, if you can get it.

Now, it turns out, the intergovernmental UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) is looking for a way to obtain this kind of immunity for its newly created Green Climate Fund — yet another murky climate initiative, this one meant to spend up to $100 billion per year (yes, some of that would be your tax dollars) under the banner of lowering greenhouse gases. Fox News’s executive editor, George Russell, broke the story on Thursday, with a piece headlined: “Mammoth new green climate fund wants United Nations-style diplomatic immunity, even though it’s not part of the UN.”

Russell reports that the UNFCCC was told in 2006 by the UN legal department that it did not quality as a UN “organ,” and “therefore could not claim immunity for its subordinate bodies or personnel.” But now the UNFCCC is making another run at gaining UN-style immunities for this potentially huge fund it has set up. The Green Climate Fund is now seeking a host country that will go along with this scheme. That would mean the Fund, and those running it, would be immune to prosecution, exempt from even the minimal oversight afforded by the UN, flush with taxpayer money from donor states – and accountable to whom? It’s a measure of how bad this set-up already is, that when Russell sent questions to the Green Climate Fund about its operations and immunities, a week later — as he reports at the end of his article — he had still received no reply.

Where does this end? The UN spawns an unaccountable intergovernmental “framework” — the UNFCCC, which in turns spawns a Green Climate Fund meant to mobilize $100 billion per year of other people’s money for what is almost certainly no clear bottom line. And that Green Climate Fund, which is not actually part of the UN, is now seeking UN-style immunity. What began as a means of protecting diplomats so they could confer on vital matters of state is evolving into a franchise, to be applied for by floating bureaucracies populated by personnel who would like to be immune from prosecution as they dole out billions procured from the grand public purse. And the bulwark against this right now seems to consist of one reporter at Fox News, whose questions this Green Climate Fund does not deign to answer.

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Claudia Rosett: Meanwhile, the UN Is Planning Your Future — All of It

@PajamasMedia

The United Nations hasn’t stopped the carnage in Syria, hasn’t stopped Iran’s race for nuclear weapons, and so far hasn’t even managed to produce financial disclosure forms for its top officials that actually disclose anything about their finances. (For instance, here’s the UN “disclosure” form for the head of the UN Environment Program,Achim Steiner.)

But that’s no bar to the UN proposing to plan the future of the planet. While the headlines focus on upheaval in the Middle East, financial crisis in Europe, and election year politics in the U.S., the UN has been planning its grand summit-level Rio+20 Conference, scheduled for June 20-22 in Brazil. This will mark the 20th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit, which helped spade the ground for climate hysteria, the Kyoto treaty, and the quack vilification of the world’s most productive economies. This round, the UN plans to make even more “sustainable” the things the UN-ocracy would like to see sustained — paramount among them, the UN itself.

As is the way of such UN confabs, the Rio+20 Conference already has a “Dedicated Secretariat,” headed by China’s Sha Zukang, the UN Under-Secretary-General who made news in 2010 for his drunken rant during a UN retreat at an Austrian ski resort — in which Sha declared he had never liked UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and he didn’t like Americans either. Also in 2010, Sha served as ceremonial presenter of a “World Harmony Award” to the former Chinese military chief who was operational commander during the 1989 crushing of the Tiananmen Square uprising.

Now, Fox News Executive Editor George Russell reports that Ban Ki-Moon, Sha Zukang and another two dozen or more of the UN’s top Rio+20 planners held a closed-door retreat last October, at a Long Island mansion, where they discussed how Rio+20 could help them reshape the world. The proceedings were meant to be secret (apparently, UN top managers prefer that the world not know the details until their world reshaping is already well underway). But Russell got hold of the confidential minutes of the discussions, which are linked in his story, “UN chief, aides, plot ‘green economy’ agenda at upcoming summit.”

The minutes include the usual mind-numbing welter of UN buzz words: “sustainable…implementing… institutional framework… integration, implementation and coherence…” etc. George Russell has done us the favor of slogging through this, and sums it up as as an agenda of “bold ambitions that stretch for years beyond the Rio conclave to consolidate a radical new global green economy, promote a spectrum of sweeping new social policies and build an even more important role for UN institutions ‘to manage the process of globalization better.’”

Could this really go anywhere? Don’t underestimate it. Thanks in substantial part to U.S. tax dollars that subsidize most of its system, the UN has the ability and resources to stage these mega-conferences, whether the U.S. contributes directly or not. These conferences produce secretariats that become permanent fixtures, and spin off other conferences, commissions, programs — which in turn become frameworks and funders of global lobbying efforts in which an organized few can trample the interests of a disorganized many. At what cost to humanity does this “sustain” and continually expand the UN, and its ever-swelling ambitions?

As it is, we have a huddle of UN officials — none of them chosen by any process that a normal democracy would recognize as elections — bankrolled in substantial part by U.S. tax dollars, and protected by UN immunities, meeting in luxurious secrecy on Long Island to plan the reshaping of the world. Not a good sign.

The Rosett Report: If You Think Federal Employees in Washington Are Overpaid…

Bio

By Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.com

… Check out salaries at the United Nations. According to the U.S. envoy for UN Management and Reform, Joseph Torsella, UN salaries average out to $119,000 per year, and at UN headquarters in New York they are on average30% higher than U.S. federal salaries in Washington.

The UN hasn’t figured much in the Republican debates, but surely those are numbers that would resonate with average American voters — who pay the biggest share of the bill for these average UN salaries.

Sleep Well — At the UN, China, Cuba and North Korea Are Watching Over Us All

by Claudia Rosett @PajamasMedia.com

In case you missed it, we’ve just had another shining moment of your United Nations at work — the same UN that the U.S. supports with contributions that last year came to some $7.7 billion.

You remember the United Nations Conference on Disarmament? That would be the Geneva-based UN conclave that recently made news for the utterly perverse reason that it was chaired in August by Cuba, and in July by one of the world’s worst rogue proliferators, North Korea.

Out of such proceedings has now come yet another report, subject of consideration and a draft resolution Oct. 21 by the UN General Assembly’s committee on Disarmament and International Security (also known as the “First Committee“). As is customary at the UN, this draft resolution reaffirms that the Conference on Disarmament is “the sole multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community.” It goes on to lament that as such, this Conference on Disarmament has been gridlocked for years — “unable to commence its substantive work for over a decade” — and hopes for forward motion soon.

Who sponsored this draft resolution? Why, China, Cuba and North Korea.

With friends like that, maybe the best one can say about the UN Conference on Disarmament, the UN’s “sole multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community,” is that it is gridlocked. That may be one small reason to sleep better at night. But in that case, the chief service rendered by the Conference is to provide a UN body that gets chaired by Cuba and North Korea, and then yields UN resolutions lamenting not the monstrosity, but the futility of the exercise. Why do we need this Disarmament Conference at all?

The Moral Vertigo of Ban Ki-Moon

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.com (Click here for story)

Whatever the reasoning behind Israel’s decision to swap more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, this deal is no stellar moment for world peace. Quite the opposite. It affirms for the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hamas that there is great gain to hostage-taking. Expect more.

It confirms that for Hamas, the whereabouts of Shalit, held hostage for more than 5 years, were no mystery; yet the erstwhile civilized world during those years chose to lavish funding on the terrorist welfare enclave run by this hostage-taking terrorist gang. And the bulk prisoner release by Israel means that cavalcades of terrorists — responsible for everything from lynching Israelis in Ramallah to wholesale slaughter in bombings of such places as an Israeli nightclub, hotel, pizza parlor, and so on — will be freed; some quite likely with ambitions to kill again.

In Gaza and the West Bank, preparations have been underway to welcome these terrorists as heroes, and celebrate their release. That’s horrifying, but no surprise. These are places where people danced in the streets and gave out candy to celebrate the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. The leaders of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have done well for themselves over the years by pursuing perpetual conflict and indoctrinating the people living under them in the ways of terror and hatred.

But why does the secretary-general of the United Nations have to hop on this blood-soaked bandwagon? Speaking Monday in Switzerland, where he has been immersed in such matters as “climate change” and Switzerland’s support for the renovation of the UN’s luxurious digs at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Ban Ki-Moon delivered himself of thefollowing statement on the swap of the parade of Palestinian terrorists for the kidnapped Israeli soldier:

The recent announcement, particularly on this exchange of prisoners — that is very welcome. And I sincerely hope that this will give some positive momentum for their relationship for peace and security.

One need not question Ban’s sincerity in this prattle about peace and security. I’m sure he would be delighted if on his watch at the UN, peace were to descend on the Middle East. But he is not a teen-age beauty contestant answering questions here about dreams for mankind. Ban is now well into his fifth year in the top job at the UN, and he was commenting on a cynical deal in which an Iranian-backed Palestinian terrorist group, in a swap for a kidnapped Israeli soldier held hostage since 2006, is now extorting a mass release of terrorists. This is “very welcome”? This will give “positive momentum” to “peace and security”? It won’t even accomplish that for the Palestinians, who, to their own detriment, are led — or, more accurately, misruled — by gangs that thrive on hate and conflict. It won’t buy peace or security for Israel. Nor will it make the world, generally, a safer place. This is a wretched set of de facto rules now being engineered for the 21st century international order. And enthroned at the United Nations, bankrolled to the gills by the U.S., is this bland international bureaucrat, lost in moral limbo, dishing out sentiments that do worse than nothing for peace, security, or even basic decency.

An obvious question follows. When the next terrorist hit on Israel takes place, will Ban’s speech-writers describe him as “disappointed,” or “concerned,” or maybe even “deeply concerned”? Whichever it’s going to be, it is horribly likely he’ll be needing that statement soon. Nor, I’d wager, will he be in the least surprised.

Did Ahmadinejad Know About the Iranian Terror Plot on Washington?

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.Com

Terror and carnage in Washington, D.C., with the Saudi ambassador assassinated by a bomb while dining at a restaurant packed with 100-150 other customers, possibly including a number of senators. That’s what “elements” of Iran’s government allegedly had planned for this autumn, according to court documents and press statements released Tuesday by U.S. authorities.

Americans are just now learning some of the details of this Iranian terror plot, in connection with charges brought against American-Iranian dual national Manssor Arbabsiar, now under arrest in New York. The criminal complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, provides 21 pages of horrifying material, much of it amassed with the help of a paid undercover informant, who posed as an associate of the unnamed Mexican drug cartel the Iranians thought they had recruited for the hit (Barry Rubin, in a terrific Pajamas post, on what it all means, links to the complaint). The complaint lays out a trail in which Arbabsiar, a naturalized American living in Texas, conspired with members of Iran’s Quds Force, an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, to orchestrate the assassination on American soil of the Saudi ambassador to the United States. The plot went all the way to the top of the Quds Force, and involved hiring the services of a violent Mexican drug cartel to use explosives to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington. If that succeeded, it was to be followed by other terrorist jobs. There are lots of fascinating details, including such trivia as the use of a code-name, “Chevrolet,” for the assassination plot; and such monstrosities as Arbabsiar’s comment to a U.S. undercover source that his Iranian co-conspirators wanted the Saudi ambassador killed, and if 100 bystanders were killed as well, “f–k ‘em.”

Yet the criminal complaint also includes a caveat: “No attempt has been made to set forth the complete factual history of this investigation or all of its details.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY @ ROSETT REPORT @ PAJAMASMEDIA.COM

Showdown Over the UN Staff Payola

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.com

While American taxpayers keep tightening their belts, it’s been profligacy as usual for the United Nations, where 4,800 upper-level staff in New York recently received cost-of-living increases that effectively raise their already tax-exempt salaries by almost 3%. This de facto pay hike was the work of the International Civil Service Commission, described on its web site as “an independent expert body ” made up of 15 members appointed by the UN General Assembly “in their personal capacity” to serve four year terms regulating and coordinating the “conditions of service” of UN staff. A big concern of the General Assembly in maintaining this body is that there be “broad geographical representation” — currently including members from countries such as Russia, China, Algeria, Ghana, Jamaica and Bangladesh, as well as from the U.S., Germany and France.

In other words, here’s yet another case in which the U.S. contributes 22% of the money, while the other 192 member states of the UN General Assembly have the overwhelming say in how it gets spent — or, in this instance, in appointing the 15 people who decide how much will be spent on salaries and perks for staff in New York. Thus are we now seeing this de facto pay rise , in addition to the tax-exemptions, dependency allowances, school grants, travel allowances and in some cases rental subsidies.

But kudos to the U.S. State Department! (Yes, you read that right). From the U.S. Mission to the UN, there has come an objection to this latest UN move to spend other people’s money padding the pay of its own staff. The new U.S. envoy for UN Management and Reform, Joseph Torsella, has written a letter to the chairman of the International Civil Service Commission, Kingston Rhodes, of Sierra Leone. In his letter, which is posted on the USUN web site, Torsella runs the numbers on the rising emoluments to UN staff in New York , and informs Rhodes that the U.S. government “strongly objects to this increase.”

Noting that this is a time of “global fiscal austerity,” Torsella points out that the U.S. federal service itself “is currently subject to a pay freeze,” and says that for UN staff in New York, “no increases in either the base salary scale or post adjustment are warranted or appropriate at this time.” Joseph Torsella concludes by requesting that the commission “take appropriate steps” to scrap the UN pay hike in New York.

Way to go Joe! Just this spring, Torsella finally arrived to fill the U.S. Mission’s slot for U.S. envoy for UN Management and Reform, a critical post which the Obama administration had neglected for more than two years — making do with an acting ambassador. Torsella had virtually no background in dealing with the UN, and I’ve had my doubts about whether he is up to the job — which, properly done, ranks right up there with the 12 labors of Hercules. The jury is still out. In the massive matter of cleaning up the multi-billion dollar global frat house that is today’s UN, this objection to a pay raise in New York is small potatoes. It would be more reassuring had Torsella cited as his rationale not only a world fiscal crunch and a pay freeze by the U.S. government (which has its own problems with profligacy), but also the dismal matter of what the well-paid UN staffers in New York actually produce.

A more resounding voice of reason on the UN is that Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Ros-Lehtinen has been preparing a UN reform bill that would tackle the mighty job of broadly reshaping the warped incentives within the UN system. The congresswoman has been looking for ways to remedy not only the extravagant spending, but the moral bankruptcy that pervades too many UN endeavors. It’s quite possible that Ros-Lehtinen’s efforts helped spark the Obama administration’s newfound interest in at least a smidgin of UN fiscal discipline. The administration, despite its love affair with the UN, has to do something to show voters it is taking notice of the UN’s vices. With the 2012 election in view, and a lot of American voters already upset about Washington’s cosmic spending spree, this would be a delicate moment for President Obama’s envoys to nod along with UN staffers pocketing beefed up paychecks in New York.

There’s also the question of whether the UN General Assembly’s “independent” International Civil Service Commission, and its chairman, Kingston Rhodes, will trouble themselves to do anything at all about Torsella’s request to ratchet back the staff pay raise. That raise is already in the system; as Torsella himself notes in his letter, it took effect August 1. The current distribution of roles within the UN General Assembly is that the U.S. provides the biggest share of the money, and the rest of gang — whose nationals pack the ranks of those 4,800 UN staffers now enjoying a raise in New York — decide how to spend it. As long as U.S. money keeps flowing in, why should anyone in this food chain care what the U.S. government has to say about it?

All that said, at least there is now a U.S. envoy for UN reform, and he has raised a very valid protest about the UN’s self-serving gravy train. It’s a start. Congratulations to Torsella. It’s worth keeping an eye on this one, to see if he finds a way to follow through.

WSJ: - Iran's Hong Kong Shipping Shell Game

CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY ON WALL-STREET JOURNAL

A Chinese state-owned firm has been helping Iranian ships get around U.S. sanctions

By CLAUDIA ROSETT

This June, a merchant ship flying the Hong Kong flag and sailing under the name of the Atlantic called at the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas—the southern end of a trade corridor to the U.S., advertised as "the fastest route to the heart of North America." That might be unremarkable, except the Atlantic, formerly called the Dreamland, and before that the Iran Saeidi, belongs to a curious network of 19 bulk carriers, all flagged to Hong Kong and all blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury for their links to Iran.

According to a recent transcript of Hong Kong's Marine Department Shipping Register, the Atlantic is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company called Harvest Supreme Limited. Scratch the surface and Harvest Supreme tracks back to an Iranian address, as do 18 other obscure and interlinked Hong Kong ship-owning companies with names such as Grand Trinity Limited and Sparkle Brilliant Development Limited. These are the hallmarks of the global shell game with which Iran continues to dodge U.S. and U.N. sanctions.

This shell game began around 2008, when the U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran's state shipping company, the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRISL, for its role in provisioning Iran's rogue missile and nuclear programs. The U.S. Treasury also blacklisted a slew of IRISL affiliates and 123 of its ships, including all 19 of these merchant ships now flagged to Hong Kong, making it potentially a crime under U.S. law to do business with them. Treasury also began pressuring players outside U.S. jurisdiction to shun Iran's proliferators, or risk being cut off from commerce with the U.S.

IRISL responded by camouflaging much of its fleet, reflagging and renaming scores of its blacklisted ships. It parceled out some to newly minted affiliates and created shell companies abroad to serve as nominal owners. Behind the scenes, IRISL retained control.

The ships themselves remain easy to identify via their permanent hull numbers, or IMO numbers, which the International Maritime Organization issues to all cargo vessels over 300 gross tonnage. Treasury posts blacklisted or "blocked" IMO numbers on its website, and these lists are the basis for identifying the ships described in this article—all designated by Treasury for their links to IRISL. But these numbers don't always appear on cargo-shipping documentation. This can make it difficult for people to understand with whom they're doing business.

This has sparked a game of whack-a-hull. Treasury over the past year alone has added to its blacklist more than 100 additional IRISL-affiliated individuals, companies and ships, in places from Germany to Malta, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Hong Kong.

The game continues, or so it appears from information uncovered by my recent inquiries at Hong Kong's corporate and shipping registries, combined with interviews and information from a leading global shipping information database, IHS Fairplay, formerly Lloyd's Register-Fairplay (the source for shipping movements cited in this article).

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Associated Press

In 2008, the Delight, now the Adrian, docked in Germany.

Since Iran launched its shipping shell game in 2008, Hong Kong has become the corporate home to 19 ships blackballed by Treasury as affiliated with IRISL and listed by IHS Fairplay as formerly flagged to Iran and owned by IRISL. Before these ships were reflagged to Hong Kong, they had names, according to IHS Fairplay, such as Iran Mufateh and Iran Navab. In their initial Hong Kong incarnation, most were given new names starting with "D," such as the Diplomat and Destiny. In 2009, they were renamed again. Currently, all 19 of these IRISL-affiliated ships reflagged to Hong Kong have names starting with the letter "A." These include, along with the Atlantic, such monikers as the Admiral, Adventist, Amplify, Angel, Ajax, Apollo, Agile, Alameda and-my favorite—the Alias.

By early this year, all 19 ships had gone through two rounds of nominal ownership by shell-companies registered in Hong Kong, as detailed at the time by the South China Morning Post. The U.S. Treasury has blacklisted the shell companies involved in these past two iterations, issuing the most recent bout of designations in January.

But as of late July, Hong Kong shipping registry transcripts showed that all 19 vessels had already come under new ownership, by 19 new companies not on public watch lists, one ship per company. These companies, unreported until now, have grandly generic names, e.g., Modern Elegant Development Limited (owner of Amplify) and Eternal Expert Limited (owner of Alias).

All 19 of these new ship-owning companies share the same Hong Kong address, that of their shared corporate secretary, Honorway Secretaries Limited—one of many Hong Kong companies offering incorporation services to a wide array of clients. At Honorway's small office, the only sign of these 19 companies is a lineup of green file boxes in a cramped back room. Honorway director David So Kam Hung says he has never set eyes on the actual owners. "Is anything wrong?" he asks.

Corporate documents for all 19 ship-owning companies show that each has as sole shareholder the same corporate nominee, a firm in the British Virgin Islands called Nominee Director & Shareholder Limited. For each of the 19 companies, this BVI shareholder has appointed the same sole director. That director is yet another new Hong Kong company, incorporated last November: King Power Holdings Limited.

And King Power Holdings, the linchpin of this ship-owning portfolio, leads to an address in Iran. According to Hong Kong corporate registry papers, King Power's sole director is an outfit called Kish Roaring Ocean Shipping Company (Private Joint Stock). The address for Kish Roaring is given as Unit 3, 3rd Floor, Sadaf Tower, P.O. Box 112, Kish Island, Islamic Republic of Iran. Kish Roaring Ocean Shipping Company is not on Treasury's blacklist. As far as I could discover, it has no publicly available records, history, email address or phone number.

For the 19 ships at the Hong Kong end of Kish Roaring's interests, there are two more common threads. Shipping data from IHS Fairplay shows that all have called at Iran within the past 18 months—13 of them within the past five months, four within the past four weeks. For all 19 vessels, the Hong Kong shipping registry lists as their agent a company called H&T International Transportation Limited, which according to a Jan. 15, 2011, article in the South China Morning Post served as agent for the same ships under their previous, now U.S.-sanctioned, nominal owners.

H&T is majority-owned by China's state-owned China Hualian International Trading Company, with offices in Hong Kong run by one of H&T's directors, David Mak Chi-ming. Until three weeks ago, H&T had been describing itself on its website, since at least last year, as an agent for IRISL. Earlier this month, I emailed H&T's Mr. Mak, asking if H&T is still doing business with IRISL. He ducked the question, writing back: "We are working with different principle from many years ago when we are welcome." A few days later, the paragraph advertising H&T as IRISL's agent vanished from H&T's website. But on one of its web pages, under the heading "Vessel Schedule," H&T continues to host a live link to IRISL's website. Mr. Mak did not respond to my further emailed questions and phone calls.

For Hong Kong companies to do business with IRISL and its network is not illegal under Hong Kong law. But the U.S. Treasury suggests it is risky if they also wish to do business with the U.S.

For at least the past three years, H&T's Mr. Mak has been working with the Texas foreign trade complex of Port San Antonio, to beef up shipping and air freight traffic between Asia and the trade corridor connecting San Antonio with the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas. In 2008, as noted in an article posted on the Port San Antonio website, Mr. Mak joined a delegation of business leaders organized by Port San Antonio to visit Lazaro Cardenas and cultivate business ties.

In a recent phone interview, Port San Antonio's vice president for business development, Jorge Canavati, said the Port San Antonio authorities have continued to work with H&T's Mr. Mak: "We're developing projects together." He said Mr. Mak had not informed him that H&T in Hong Kong has been serving as an agent for 19 ships on Treasury's Iran sanctions blacklist.

Meanwhile, at least seven of these 19 Iran-linked, Hong Kong-flagged, U.S.-blacklisted ships have visited Lazaro Cardenas in the past 15 months: the Agean, Agile, Apollo and Attribute; plus the Aquarian and Atrium this April, and the Atlantic in June. Perhaps it's time the world's sanctions enforcers took a closer look at this setup.

Ms. Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Durban III: The Monaco Factor

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.com

On Sept. 22, the United Nations will strike a blow for bigotry, by hosting Durban III — the third in what has become a series of UN gatherings dedicated in name to fighting racism, but devoted in practise to whipping up and institutionalizing anti-Semitism. The UN’s so-called “Durban process” singles out Israel for opprobrium. The UN’s first Durban conference, held in South Africa, in 2001, turned into such a mob attack on Israel that the U.S. delegation walked out. The UN’s second Durban “review” conference, held in Geneva, in 2009, had its preparatory committee chaired by Libya, and featured as a star speaker Iran’s Holocaust-denier-in-chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The U.S. boycotted that conference, and when Ahmadinejad began to speak, a parade of Western delegates walked out.

Undeterred, the UN General Assembly is now planning to hold Durban III at the UN’s headquarters in New York, timed to coincide with the annual pileup of heads of state who come every September to tie up midtown Manhattan traffic and speak at the UN General Assembly’s annual opening. Preparations are already well-advanced for providing the assembled worthies with a full day of opportunities to “commemorate” the bigotry of the original Durban conference, as Anne Bayefsky of EyeontheUN reports in her latest article on “U.N. Busy Deciding How to Slam Israel.”

The good news — such as there is — is that six countries have now announced they will not attend Durban III: Canada, the U.S., Israel, the Netherlands, Italy, and the Czech Republic all want no part of this Durban grotesquerie. The bad news is that with only half a dozen countries pulling out to date, that leaves 187 of the UN’s 193 member states (South Sudan was just enrolled by the UN as the 193rd member) either unwilling to take a stand for decency, or eager to go ahead with yet another UN festival of anti-Semitism.

What is to be done? Well, sometimes leverage can be found in strange places. So here’s something to ponder. Preparations for Durban III are being “co-facilitated” by two countries, and an odd coupling it is: Cameroon and Monaco.

There’s no point in expecting decency from the longtime dictatorship of Cameroon — which, while serving at the UN as a grandee of Durban III, has reportedly failed to end slavery on its own turf, and has fostered a system that human rights watchdog Freedom House describes as a sinkhole of cronyism, discrimination against women, and “a transit center for child trafficking.”

But what about Cameroon’s Durban III partner, Monaco? Yes, the Monaco of glamor, fashion, and oh-so-up-market Western civilization? The Monaco of the late Grace Kelly, of charity balls, of fancy royal photos and the recent wedding of Prince Albert. Monaco, with its tiny population of just under 36,000, enjoys a lovely rating by the U.S. State Department as a place where in 2010 there were no reports of anti-Semitic attacks or discrimination against any religion.

Surely, if Monaco carries on lending its name and reputation to Durban III, Monaco’s good name is due for quite a downgrade. This is a conference that the U.S., Canada, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic have all decided to spurn because, in the words of the U.S. government: “The Durban process included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism.” Does Monaco really want to make its mark at the UN as a high-end caterer to anti-Semites?

By the same token, little Monaco could do the world a big favor — by wising up and pulling out of Durban III. As “co-facilitator” of the General Assembly preparations to date, Monaco could punch well above its weight, should it decide even at this late hour to do a U-turn and boycott the conference. Unlike the quisling project of arranging the panel discussions and place settings for Durban III, backing away from the entire “commemoration” would be an act of genuine leadership, and — frankly — self-respect. Is anyone at the State Department making that case to the eminences of Monaco?

Record-Busting U.S. Spending on the United Nations

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.Com

While President Obama exhorts American taxpayers to tighten their belts, and the U.S. flirts with default, the United Nations is setting new records for spending American money. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has produced its latest report, required by Congress, on U.S. contributions to the UN. For the 2010 fiscal year, the U.S. bankrolled the UN to the tune of $7.69 billion. As the Heritage Foundation’s Brett Schaefer notes, that’s a “staggering 21 percent increase over FY2009.”

It’s also more than double the $3.539 which U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, in testimony this April to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, implied was the rough amount of U.S. annual spending on the UN.

The rise in U.S. contributions reflects soaring UN budgets over the past decade, to which the U.S. has been the biggest contributor. The exact percentage of UN activity funded by the U.S. varies, depending on which part of the UN we’re talking about. But browsing the OMB report can give you a pretty good idea of how big a hunk of the UN tab is bankrolled by American taxpayers. Scroll down in the report to page 2, where you can discover that the U.S. in fiscal 2010 bankrolled 27.3% of all UN peacekeeping, 22% of the regular budget, 33.6% of the World Food Program, and 26.5% of the budget of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA).

What’s America getting for all this money? One seat, with one vote, in a 192-member General Assembly dominated by the largely anti-American preferences of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the G-77 plus China. One permanent seat on the Security Council, alongside veto-wielding China (which contributes a mere 3.189% of the UN’s regular budget) and Russia (which contributes 1.6%). And such privileges as a chance to rub elbows with the likes of Iran and Cuba on the governing board of the UN’s flagship agency, the UN Development Program (UNDP). Plus the endless circus act in which the UN promises transparency, better oversight and more efficient management — and delivers soaring budgets, opaque finances and bubbling scandals. All those American billions now pouring into the UN had their origins in work done by Americans, who earned that money, and then had it taxed away by government — and turned over to the UN. Given a choice, could those taxpayers perhaps find better uses for their dollars?

Shopping at the UN for Global Leadership

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.com

Leading from behind may be President Obama’s preferred approach on foreign policy, but apparently that doesn’t apply when it comes to paying for the United Nations, where the U.S. is just one of 192 voting member states, but gets stuck with roughly one-quarter of the bill for the entire system. When it comes to spending billions on the UN, administration officials keep making the pitch for America to lead from the front. As far as there’s any logic to this pretzel of an approach, it seems to entail staying way out ahead of the pack on funding, while trying to lead from behind on policy.

The latest pitch came this week from Assistant Secretary of State Esther Brimmer, in a June 15 address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Brimmer attempted the contortionist feat of combining, in a single speech, a profession of American support for Israel with a pitch for a continuing flood of American money into the UN system. What with the UN being a relentless font of Israel-fixated anti-Semitism, one might have supposed the better move would be to cut off the funding on which such UN bigotry enjoys a free ride. But so far that’s not in the administration’s playbook. Instead, the argument is that yet more U.S. money for the UN will help buy a degree of integrity from that institution which loads of money have already failed to produce. Brimmer says of the U.S. at the UN: “We must be a responsible global leader, and that means paying our bills.”

No, it doesn’t. Not when those bills are supporting an institution that undercuts American interests and savages an American ally. If the Obama administration wants to buy its way back toward global leadership, forget the UN — it’s time to go shopping somewhere else.

Durban III: The Good News and the Bad News

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.com

In the United Nations cosmos of Orwellian ventures, one of the prominent features has become the series of conferences named for an initial 2001 conclave in Durban, South Africa. That gathering was supposed to be about fighting racism. Instead, it became a debauch of anti-Semitic Israel-bashing so extreme that then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell ordered the U.S. delegation to walk out. That conference is now known as Durban I.

With the aim of building on the achievements of Durban I, the UN followed up in 2009 with Durban II, also known as the Durban Review Conference. That was held in Geneva, Switzerland, amid the manicured flowerbeds, peacock-bedecked lawns and BMW-filled parking lots of the UN’s Palais des Nations, former home to the failed League of Nations. Durban II is most memorable for having featured, as a star speaker, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Obama administration decided close to the last minute to boycott that conference. Ahmadinejad’s speech triggered a walkout by a host of Western delegates. Pajamas Media’s Roger Simon and I had gone to Geneva to cover Durban II (we found ourselves staying in a hotel where Ahmadinejad had booked 40 rooms to accommodate his entourage) and when the conference fizzled into a gross embarrassment for the UN, thanks to Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust-denying style, Roger quite reasonably hoped that might mean an end to the Durban “process.”

The UN General Assembly decided otherwise. A Durban III conference is now scheduled for Sept. 22, this time at UN headquarters, in New York, timed to coincide with the annual opening of the General Assembly. Officially, it is styled as a 10th anniversary commemoration of the original 2001 Durban I conference. That was an event so hate-filled and grotesque that one might suppose the UN would wish either to forget it, or apologize for it — not commemorate it. But that’s not how things work at the UN, where standard operating procedure of the General Assembly is that U.S. taxpayers supply the biggest share of the money, and outfits like the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, or the 131 members of the so-called Group of 77 (presided over in 2009 by Sudan), decide how to spend it.

The good news is that the Obama administration has finally decided to boycott Durban III. As UN Watch reports, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York led a coalition of 18 senators who months ago called on the U.S. administration to follow the lead set by Canada, and pull out. On June 1, the State Department sent Gillibrand a letter saying the U.S. “will not participate” in Durban III, and had voted against the General Assembly resolution establishing this event “because the Durban process included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and we did not want to see that commemorated.”

The bad news is that the UN is still going ahead with Durban III. The next “consultation on the scope, modalities, format and organization of the high-level meeting of the General Assembly to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action” is scheduled for this Friday, at 10 A.M., in the UN’s General Assembly Hall in New York. The “co-facilitators” of these consultations, the ambassadors of Monaco and Cameroon, sent a letter on May 27th to the president of the General Assembly, Switzerland’s Joseph Deiss, inviting him to draw up a list of NGO representatives to attend Durban III. That’s not reassuring, given Deiss’s record as the General Assembly president who this past March employed the UN’s General Assembly Hall as the extravagant and utterly inappropriate venue for the U.S. premiere of a movie trashing Israel.

An Obama administration boycott of Durban III is a good start (though Inner-City Press reports that the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, describes it not as a boycott, but, more euphemistically, an act of non-participation). But even if the U.S. does not participate — indeed, even if the U.S. refuses to fork out the money for the conference itself — U.S. taxpayers are still bankrolling the biggest share of the facilities, the amenities, and even the security that will enable this conference. American taxpayers are footing the biggest share of the bill for the current $2 billion renovation of the UN’s New York headquarters, where the organizers of Durban III are now availing themselves of the meeting halls. American taxpayers pay for 22% of the UN’s core budget, and the U.S. hosts its tax-exempt headquarters and tax-exempt diplomatic missions. Americans foot the bill for ensuring that when Ahmadinejad comes to New York to swagger on the UN stage, as he has done at every General Assembly opening since 2005, he will have a safe visit. The organizers of Durban III, as explained by the “co-facilitatators” of the preparations, the ambassadors of Monaco and Cameroon, are very much hoping that this “commemoration” will be a summit event, studded with heads of state and government.

In other words, if the Obama administration is serious about rejecting the malicious Durban “process,” then steering clear of the actual pow-wow ought to be just the beginning. Nor is the issue the variable cost of the conference itself. The U.S. has a massive investment of many billions of dollars, as well as its own good name, in the enormous fixed costs of the institution of the UN itself. That is what the devotees of Durban III and the Durban “process” are already abusing, yet again. The beginning of a real answer here is not just “non-participation” in Durban III, or even a largely symbolic withholding of some fraction of the variable cost of this latest outrage. Real progress might come if and when the U.S. greets such stunts as Durban III by withholding from the UN sums of money spectacular enough so that even the likes of Monaco, Cameroon and Switzerland’s Joseph Deiss start asking themselves whether the pleasures of such bigotry are worth the cost.