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.

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.

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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.

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.

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?

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.

How the United Nations Can Help Japan

by Claudia Rosett at PajamasMedia.Com

Utterly undeserved hell is being visited upon Japan. Aftershocks continue from the monster quake. The tsunami has devastated the northeast coast. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, thousands are missing, and hundreds are already reported dead. Japanese officials fear a meltdown at the quake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

And now, here comes the United Nations, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon voicing sorrow and promising, as summed up by a UN press release, that “the UN would do all it could to mobilize humanitarian assistance and disaster risk reduction teams as soon as possible.” This comes with the usual UN offers of staff on standby and inventories of high-energy biscuits.

Here’s the real favor the UN could do for Japan: Back off.

There’s no need to doubt the sorrow of Ban and his colleagues, or the good intentions of many members of the UN staff. But the UN’s history of dealing with disaster relief is, itself, a saga of disaster. In the relief operation for the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia in December, 2004, the UN trumpeted itself as the only outfit fit to lead and coordinate such an effort. As events actually played out, it was the U.S. Navy that arrived first to do the emergency heavy lifting, while the UN was still getting organized. In collecting funds for the multi-billion dollar relief effort, the UN promised complete transparency, but with its usual welter of confusion, delays, obfuscation and bureaucracy, the UN delivered nothing of the kind. A Financial Times investigation a year later found that as much as one-third of the tsunami relief funds were swallowed by “salaries and administrative overheads” — roughly triple the cost of relief provided more swiftly and efficiently by private charities. Similar problems have dogged one UN relief effort after another, from cyclone relief money effectively handed over to pad the pockets of Burmese officials, to the lavish “love boat” and staggering overhead involved in Haitian earthquake relief efforts.

Of course, Japan is a wealthy democracy, with far fewer of the potential pitfalls of sending aid to Indonesia, or Burma, or Haiti. But by the same token, Japan is far better equipped to handle this disaster, and within hours of the tsunami had already mobilized its own troops and ships for a massive rescue effort. Japan has well-equipped allies, such as America, which are already offering help. There’s no need to launder any of this through the “coordinating efforts” or high-overhead red tape and delays of the UN.

Ban, in his remarks on Friday, noted that Japan is one of the world’s strongest benefactors. Japan certainly is, and, not least, it is spectacularly generous to the UN — where it is the second largest donor after the United States. But for the UN to now rush to the aid of Japan would hardly qualify as an act of unmitigated gratitude. Big UN relief efforts involve big UN overheads and a UN bureaucracy both opaque and devoted to its own brand of multilateral affirmative action — in which the first priority is to serve the grand collective of the UN, rather than its suffering clientele. For Japan and its wealthiest allies to cycle their relief resources via the UN — which is what a UN relief effort in this case would amount to — would be to add a layer of mess and expense that nobody needs right now. Except maybe the UN. Japan has enough problems to deal with. Don’t add the UN to the mix

Egypt: Please, Not ElBaradei

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by Claudia Rosett

Freedom, justice, and prosperity for Egypt are devoutly to be wished. As is abundantly clear by now, the big question for the genuine democrats among the demonstrators, and a big question for the U.S., Israel, and other democracies, is how Egyptians might thread this needle without ending up with something even worse than Hosni Mubarak — the ossified dictator they’ve had for almost 30 years. On that score, as Iran’s regime and the Muslim Brotherhood applaud the protests, it is not at all reassuring to see former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei emerging as a potential leader of the opposition. Reuters carries one of the latest reports, dateline Cairo, on the Muslim Brotherhood backing ElBaradei as the man to negotiate with Egypt’s government on behalf of the demonstrators.

At a fast glance, ElBaradei might seem like an ideal candidate for the job. He’s Egyptian, cosmopolitan, with credentials that include years as the head of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, and the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. Since he retired from the IAEA in 2009, there have been reports that he might be interested in an Egyptian presidential run. The Mubarak government has just further burnished ElBaradei’s credentials by putting him under house arrest.

Beware. ElBaradei is no Aung San Suu Kyi. As head of the IAEA, ElBaradei often looked like a shill for Iran — repeatedly glossing over obvious signs of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, obfuscating the realities, and delaying action. In the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick gives a good rundown of how, in the U.S. effort to corral Iran’s nuclear program, ElBaradei was not part of the answer, but part of the problem. Glick also describes ElBaradei’s cozy relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood — progenitor of al-Qaeda and Hamas — quoting him as giving a recent interview to Der Spiegel in which he claimed the Muslim Brotherhood has “not committed any acts of violence in five decades.”

In 2009, as I reported at the time here on Pajamas Media, ElBaradei most inappropriately used his platform as erstwhile “neutral” head of the IAEA to bully the BBC for dropping plans to broadcast a fund-raiser for terrorist-controlled Gaza. As for his 2005 Nobel prize, bestowed despite a tenure that spanned Pakistan’s breakout nuclear test, North Korea’s nuclear buildup to its 2006 first nuclear test, and Iran’s lively pursuit of the bomb, this was one of those Norwegian choices that had nothing to do with peace, and plenty to do with political machinations. Coming in 2005, at the height of the Oil-for-Food scandal, ElBaradei’s Nobel looked more like a sop to shore up a UN sinking in its own sleaze than an award that should inspire respect.

Egypt desperately needs honest, genuinely democratic leaders to emerge from the current inferno. ElBaradei may look smooth and convenient, with his UN past, his Nobel, and his longtime skills at self-promotion. But please, not El Baradei.

UN Eco-Commissars on Bali – Again

by Claudia Rosett at PajamasMedia.com

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

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

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

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

And in the UNEP press announcement of this conference, there is already a strong flavor of yet more alarmism, calculated to bring in yet more funding for these folks, as — I’m not making these names up — the United Nations Body Burden Forum gets ready to sound alarms about “the toxic chemical burden increasingly borne by the life of the planet.” Again — it’s a great idea to actually clean up toxic chemicals. But do you trust this UN crowd to decide what those are? Or to find a reasonable way to do it?

Part of this UN bash will be a special session of the UNEP governing council. That council includes not only such members as the U.S., Canada and Japan, but also Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran – Iranian government officials being free to join in overseeing and attending such shindigs, despite Iran’s being under UN sanctions for its continuing pursuit of nuclear weapons (which, in Iran’s hands, would be terrible for a lot of things, including the environment).

There’s lots here that bears watching, but I’ll round this off with a note that at this plush pow-wow the UN’s propaganda engines will be roaring full steam ahead. On Feb. 22-23, this Monday and Tuesday, UNEP will put together a media workshop, on “Reporting Green — The Environment as News.” What fun for the media! A two-day workshop on Bali, by the beach. Will this workshop be teaching the media how to ask hardball questions about things like IPCC findings, UNEP conflicts of interest, or, for that matter, repeat UN mega-eco-conferences on Bali? I’d say, don’t hold your breath.

Now Iran Wants a Seat on the UN Human Rights Council

by Claudia Rosett at PajamasMedia.com

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

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

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

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

The Bush administration was able to accomplish that much even without having a seat on the Human Rights Council itself – which the U.S. in 2006, under Bush and Bolton, declined to join, on grounds that it was too flawed in design to do a decent job. That concern has been richly vindicated. Since the “reformed” Human Rights Council was launched in 2006, it has reverted to the same Orwellian failings as its predecessor, the Human Rights Commission — absolving or ignoring most of the world’s worst human rights abusers (including Iran, on which it has issued not a single condemnatory resolution), and focusing most of its efforts instead on condemning the democratic nation of Israel. Last year alone, the Human Rights Council brought us both the anti-Semitic Durban Review Conference, and terror-biased Goldstone Report).

Under President Barack Obama’s policy of “engagement,” the U.S. reversed course last year, seeking and winning a seat on the Human Rights Council. The rationale of Obama’s UN ambassador Susan Rice was that the U.S. could better leverage good behavior from the Council by “working within.” The effect has been to confer on the Council a renewed legitimacy, which may help explain why Iran again covets a seat.

For Iran to win that seat would send a terrible, disheartening message to the dissidents inside Iran — effectively telling them that the “international community” sides with the thug regime now beating, jailing and killing them in reply to their demands for basic human rights. So where’s the Obama administration on this? We’ve heard nothing yet. Surely “engagement” does not extend to letting Iran slide into a seat on the UN Human Rights Council?

Why Such Secrecy When North Korea’s Caught Shipping Weapons to Iran?

by Claudia Rosett @ Pajamas Media

It has the makings of the opening sequence in an apocalyptic thriller. A ship enters the Gulf, carrying a secret, illicit cargo of munitions, bound for Iran from North Korea. The ship is seized by the United Arab Emirates, where authorities discover that instead of the oil boring equipment listed on the manifest, the cargo includes some 10 containers filled with rocket launchers, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and detonators.

The UAE seizes the cargo and notifies the United Nations Security Council. But for weeks, the public is told nothing about it – not by the UN, and not by Washington. The event remains cloaked in silence, the ship is sent on its way. Finally, an unnamed diplomat leaks the information to the Financial Times, and the story starts to emerge…

Except this is no fantasy. This is the latest news out of the web connecting totalitarian, nuclear North Korea with the messianic, terrorist-sponsoring, nuclear wannabe regime of Iran. And here we go again.

The story about this North Korean arms shipment broke August 29th in the FT, and in the short time since we have been hearing slightly more — but not nearly enough. This North Korean shipment underscores huge and troubling questions about what else is going on inside the tangled web of clandestine deals with which the world’s tyrannies are busy these days — arming each other, supporting each other, and fueling their killing machines while western diplomats jaw-jaw about “engagement” and “mutual respect.”

And what a web it is. There’s a good summary of the scene on Hot Air . Both North Korea and Iran are under multiple UN sanctions, meant to stop their nuclear proliferation programs. This shipment offers a terrific example of how rogue countries try to dodge such sanctions. The ship was Australian, controlled by a French conglomerate, registered in the Bahamas, with the actual shipment, according to Reuters, “arranged by the Shanghai office of an Italian company.” So, in the middle of this clandestine arms deal is a crazy quilt of countries, businesses and legal jurisdictions, apparently involving Australia, France, the Bahamas, Italy and China — all with North Korea on one end and Iran on the other (Iranian authorities are now denying that this shipment was coming their way. These are the same folks who say their nuclear program is just for electricity). So, what else is out there right now, on the high seas, on land, or in the air, bearing false labeling and traveling the back alleys of global commerce?

The Wall Street Journal reports that “according to people familiar with the seizure,” there was “no nuclear-related material” found on board. Should we trust such unnamed sources? Who are they, and why are they unnamed? Recall the case of the secret nuclear reactor nearly completed by Syria, with North Korean help, modeled on North Korea’s Yongbyon complex. That reactor was destroyed two years ago, in September, 2007, by an Israeli air strike. But from a Bush administration intent at the time on trying to consumate a deal in which North Korea would denuclearize in exchange for loads of U.S. aid and concessions, the truth was covered up until the following April — leaving the public in the dark for more than half a year about the incriminating evidence of both North Korea’s proliferation racket, and its duplicity at the negotiating table.

It would be helpful, for instance, to hear more about those confiscated North Korean “detonators” bound for Iran. Perhaps, as the nameless sources have it, these detonators are not nuclear related. But in the process of making nuclear bombs, one of the trickiest parts to get right is the detonator. North Korea has been testing nuclear weapons, and so, presumably, has been working to acquire expertise with such items. Would some diplomat with an actual on-the-record name, or maybe even some official with a clearly defined job in the White House, be willing to assure us that nuclear detonators were in no way involved in this shipment?

Not that this shipment would be all right, even if limited to conventional arms. North Korea, following a blitz of nuclear and missile tests, is under UN sanctions that forbid such weapons exports. Iran’s regime has recently been busy murdering its own peaceful protesters, who took to the streets to protest the “re-election” as president of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran’s regime, along with its genocidal pronouncements about Israel, has a broad and deep record of terror abroad, including bombings in Beirut and Argentina, and the training, supporting and equipping today of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza. For North Korea to be shipping weapons of any kind to Iran bodes ill.

The good news is that the UAE found this particular weapons shipment and seized it. Thank you, UAE — and if anyone tipped them off, thanks to them, too. Though with the UAE serving as a hub of Iranian commerce, a lot more evidence of similar diligence would be welcome. At least this is a step up from the recent exercise in which U.S. warships shadowed a North Korean freighter with a suspect cargo, but in the course of politely following UN rules to the letter, were impotent to board and actually check the cargo.

But why have both the UN and the White House been so coy about this story of North Korean arms to Iran? As of this writing there has still be no straightforward official confirmation from the UN, or from Washington, of any part of this tale. Various accounts, from the wire agencies, in the newspapers, and so forth, have been attributed to unnamed “diplomats,” or to persons “familiar” with the situation.

How odd. President Obama runs an administration that’s proving keen to ferret out and display to the public every twitch by every CIA interrogator who years ago tried to protect Americans from al-Qaeda plots. But in this very current matter of the murderous regime in Pyongyang shipping concealed and forbidden weapons to the killers of Tehran, the Obama team, with great delicacy, has left the facts misted over. We are hearing only from nameless “diplomats.”

From the UN, there has likewise been nothing official. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has been busy hailing the “latest steps” in relations between North and South Korea. The Security Council sanctions committee which received direct word from the UAE about the arms shipment has kept quiet. The three-member UN bureau overseeing sanctions on North Korea is chaired by Turkey, and the two vice-chairs are Costa Rica and Libya. Yes, you read that right –Libya, which currently holds one of the 10 rotatings seats on the UN Security Council, and is about to provide the next president of the General Assembly for its 2009-2010 session. (This would be the same Libya whose tyrant, Muammar Qaddafi, was perhaps distracted from North-Korean-Iranian weapons traffic by such questions as where he might pitch his tent when he comes to New York next month, to speak immediately after President Obama on the Sept. 24th opening day of speeches to the General Assembly. And the same Qaddafi who just welcomed home one of his own terrorist agents, convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi, released by Scotland on “compassionate grounds.”)

This precise timing of this arms shipment seizure seems unclear; it has been variously reported as having happened around mid-August, or perhaps earluer. It comes, of course, as North Korea has been making overtures again to the U.S. about returning to the bargaining table. It comes in the same season as Bill Clinton’s trip to retrieve jailed employees of Al Gore TV venture from Pyongyang. It comes as President Obama heads into a fall season in which he still seems to have some expectation that by extending a hand to Iran’s regime, he can curtail the threats posed not only by its nuclear program, but by its global terror networks, and cozy dealings with the likes of Syria and North Korea.

There’s a lot of incentive under Obama’s extended-hand policy for the U.S. to downplay, yet again, a global web of rogue powers and murderous designs, in which the UAE seizure has just highlighted dirty dealings between two major hubs — North Korea and Iran. This is the audacity of evil. If Obama wants to steer toward real hope and change on the foreign front, he needs to step up to the microphone and with at least as much audacity, tell American voters, and the world, exactly what’s going on, and just how pervasive and dangerous these webs are — whether Iran and North Korea want us to hear about it, or not.

Meanwhile, Over at the UN: Cashing In On Terrorism?

While we wait for details of an Obama-Biden ticket that will surely propose an even deeper love affair with the United Nations than that of the Condi Rice State Department, here’s one of those United Nations conundrums:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will be convening a UN symposium in New York next month on supporting victims of terrorism.

But the UN still hasn’t managed to come up with a basic definition of terrorism.

So if the UN can’t even figure out who’s a terrorist, how will the UN decide who’s a victim?

For a clue about where this latest initiative from Ban is likely to take us, check out the language in the UN press release linked above. Ban’s terror-victim forum, described as “the first of its kind at the United Nations,” is supposed to “help Member States to stand as one to support the victims of terrorism and to encourage civil society’s involvement against the scourge…” etc. etc.

“Stand as one”–?? Maybe Ban hasn’t noticed, but this is the fast track to the UN’s usual brand of Orwellian politics and moral bankruptcy. There are some UN member states — such as Iran — that like the idea of obliterating other entire member states, and support terrorists, such as Hezbollah, as a matter of state policy. (Although at the UN, Hezbollah cannot be regarded as a terrorist group, because there is no definition of terrorism).

For the UN, of course, it’s boom busines to keep ginning up new programs for an ever-expanding list of assorted groups of “victims.” Every new initiative becomes a rationale for more UN conferences, jobs, and solicitations for money. Whether any real victims are actually helped (or harmed) tends to become a secondary issue, if not simply irrelevant to the servicing and gourmet feeding of the UN organism — the conferences on Bali, the aid to dictators, the billions for peacekeeping forces that can’t keep peace and also can’t seem to keep their hands off the children they are supposed to protect. The UN has by now involved itself with so many categories of “victims” that by now the only victims for whom Ban is not convening forums or launching programs or dispatching envoys would seem to be the taxpayers of the developed democratic world, who fund most of the UN’s opaque, unaccountable patronage systems.

In this case, supporting victims of terrorism might sound worthy — after all, who wouldn’t be sympathetic to genuine victims of terrorism? But before Ban starts convening participants from “all regions, cultures and religions, representing a diversity of terror-victim experiences,” how about the UN producing a clear and reasonable definition of this experience Ban wants the world-as-one to address?

If Ban really wants the UN to do something useful to stop the scourge of terrorism, he’d do better to start by cleaning up his own house. Step one: Instead of holding a new symposium, he could stand up and call loud and clear for member states to stay away from the UN’s Durban II conference, now being planned for 2009 by the likes of Libya, Iran, Cuba, Russia and Pakistan — which shows every signs of becoming a replay of the malevolent 2001 hate-fest that was Durban I. Before the UN starts cashing in on teror-victims as a source of employment and per diems for the UN itself, His Eminence the Secretary-General ought to bestir himself to defuse the UN itself as a mothership of moral equivalence, and an incubator of hatred.

UN Buddies Up With Terror-Linked Islamic Charity — Again

It sounds like the ultimate Dog-Bites-Man story – ho hum, there’s the UN climbing into bed with yet another terror-linked outfit. Does it really matter?

You bet. Given the UN’s rapidly expanding resources and reach, and its proclivities for providing opaque, diplomatically immune conduits worldwide for men, materials, money and bad ideas, it actually does matter what the UN gets up to. For the case at hand, see the recent Fox News story headlined “UNICEF Partners With Islamic Charity Linked to Terror Groups” — this about UNICEF hooking up with a Saudi-based charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO, whose Philippine and Indonesian branches have been designated by the U.S. Treasury and the UN itself as terrorist entities linked to Al Qaeda. The article begins: “An Islamic Charity with ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban is now collaborating with an unlikely new partner: UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.”

There’s just one point on which I would disagree. There is nothing “unlikely” about this charity, the IIRO, collaborating with UNICEF. This same Saudi charity, the IIRO, already has ties to the UN. The IIRO has held consultative status since 1995 with the UN General Assembly’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, or ECOSOC. It also partners with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) — see pages 9 and 21– the kind of connection the UNHCR has particularly come to prize because of the potential for Saudi money — just search in this UNHCR document on “donor.” The Saudis say there’s nothing wrong with the IIRO, and we can only hope they’re right — because once something takes root at the UN, it almost never goes away. Last year, Reps. Zach Wamp, Thaddeus McCotter, Scott Garrett, Cliff Stearns and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced a bill calling for the Secretary of State (see post below on Condi Rice, Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Fool) to withhold some U.S. taxpayer money from the UN’s ECOSOC “until such time as the UN and ECOSOC have withdrawn consultative status for all organizations with any affiliations to terrorist organizations.” The bill mentioned one organization by name, the IIRO. Results to date: IIRO, still involved with ECOSOC and the UNHCR, now teams up with UNICEF. Dog bites man. That can hurt.