The United States said on Monday it had stopped funding UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency, following its vote to grant the Palestinians full membership.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters the United States had no choice but to halt funding because of U.S. laws passed in the 1990s, saying Washington would not make a planned $60 million transfer that was due in November.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, will be handing in the PLO’s bid for full membership of the United Nations.
On Friday, Abbas is due to put his case to his people in a major speech in Ramallah.
The United States, however, wants Abbas – who is acting in his capacity as chairman of the PLO and not as PA president – to drop the bid.
Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna reports from the occupied West Bank
Palestinians are planning a “day of rage” on Friday in response to the US wielding its veto against a UN security council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
The US decision to use its veto has sparked a furious reaction in the West Bank and Gaza.
Anti-US rallies took place in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Tulkarem and Jenin this weekend after the 14-1 vote on the resolution, in which the US stood alone against the rest of the security council, including Britain, Germany and France. It voted in contradiction of its own policy.
In Gaza, Hamas described the US position as outrageous and said Washington was “completely biased” towards Israel.
Ibrahim Sarsour, an Israeli-Arab member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, said it was time to tell the US president, Barack Obama, to “go to hell”.
“Obama cannot be trusted,” he wrote in an open letter to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. “We knew his promises were lies. The time has come to spit in the face of the Americans.”
Frustrated by the collapse of U.S.-sponsored peace talks, Palestinians are preparing to take their case to the U.N. Security Council in the coming days with a resolution declaring ongoing Jewish settlement in the West Bank a major obstacle to ending the conflict.
The carefully worded resolution stops short of calling for sanctions against Israel or seeking recognition for Palestinian statehood. But it is designed to increase pressure on both Israel and the United States, Palestinian officials said.
The U.S. frequently has supported Israel by vetoing such moves in the U.N. But Palestinian officials say the proposed resolution largely mirrors views expressed by the Obama administration in recent months.
In a little noticed remark on Fox News last week, President George W. Bush’s former ambassador to the UN remarked that the US should have kept Pakistan’s dictator in power and derided those who “think democracy is always the answer.”
John Bolton, whose nomination was so controversial Bush tapped him during a Senate recess and then declined to resubmit him after his recess appointment expired, made the comments on Fox News Thursday. The discussion was highlighted Saturday by ThinkProgress, a liberal blog.
“[D]emocracy and civilian governments in Pakistan have been so discredited because of incompetence and corruption,” Bolton said. “I thought the Musharraf government, military, authoritarian rule that it was, was the most likely kind of government to be able to make the changes we made. [...] I would have kept Musharraf in power. I think the Bush administration made a mistake in pushing him out. In Pakistan they call the military the “steel skeleton” because it really is the only thing that holds the country together. That offends some people who think democracy is always the answer. Personally, I would put American interests above that. I wouldn’t have gotten rid of Musharraf.”
Gareth Porter: UN Fact-Finding Mission Says Israelis “Executed” US Citizen Furkan Dogan
Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist, is set to be tasked with co-ordinating humanity’s response if and when extraterrestrials make contact.
Aliens who landed on earth and asked: “Take me to your leader” would be directed to Mrs Othman.
She will set out the details of her proposed new role at a Royal Society conference in Buckinghamshire next week.
The 58-year-old is expected to tell delegates that the proposal has been prompted by the recent discovery of hundreds of planets orbiting other starts, which is thought to make the discovery of extraterrestrial life more probable than ever before.
Mrs Othman is currently head of the UN’s little known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa).
In a recent talk to fellow scientists, she said: “The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day human kind will received signals from extraterrestrials.
“When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations on Thursday most people believe the U.S. government was responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001, prompting the U.S. delegation to leave in protest.
August 26, 2010 News Corp
Speaking at the urgent UN Security Council session in New York, Turkey’s Foreign Minister has condemned Israel’s attack on humanitarian aid convoy off the shore of Gaza as unacceptable and called for measures to bring Israel to responsibility.
After the United Nations ratified a resolution calling for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moves to condemn the treaty.
The attack came after all 189 signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) reached a deal on Friday for the establishment of a Middle East without nukes.
The 28-page statement by the NPT members — which was agreed upon following a month of wrangling — called on all Middle East nations to attend a conference on ridding the region of weapons of mass destruction due to be held in 2012.
The Friday’s agreement also stressed “the importance of Israel’s accession to the treaty and the placement of all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards.”
Reacting to the ratification, the Israeli prime minister issued a statement on Saturday announcing that Israel would not participate in the 2012 conference.
“Israel will not be able to take part in its [the resolution] implementation,” AFP quoted Netanyahu as saying in the statement.
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UN Says Gays Can be Executed Without Cause
2010 Leave a Comment
It’s awful to think anyone could be executed for being gay, but to some extent I have a problem with the idea of a supranational organization dictating what individual countries can or cannot do. In an ideal world where our leaders are not maniacal depopulationists and power trippers, this would all be fine, but the fact is they just use global governance to tale away our civil liberties and national sovereignty, and of course it is always in the name of security. They start with laws about human rights and next thing you know, you have the WHO telling Canada to buy useless flu shots and the Codex Alimentarius commission bringing back banned pesticides and telling countries to ban natural medicines. So where do you draw the line?
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/…