US to Leave ‘Foolish, Unworthy’ UN Human Rights Council Over Anti-Israel Bias

Good riddance! And take Saudi Arabia with you! What the heck are these two war criminal nations doing in a human rights council?

© AFP 2018 / MANDEL NGAN

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sputniknews.com

June 15, 2018

The United States’ demands regarding reforming the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) have failed to be met, and as such Washington is reportedly ready to pull out over what it calls anti-Israel bias and the inclusion of alleged rights abusers.

Diplomats told Reuters that it’s merely a matter of time before the US exits the council, which will convene Monday for a three week convention that will last until July 6. One US source who spoke anonymously said that an announcement looks “imminent.” 

Another US official in Geneva, where the UNHRC will meet June 18, said, “we are still moving ahead with our engagement for the coming session.”

© REUTERS / Joshua Roberts

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has cast shade on the council since taking the job, while both the US State Department and US President Donald Trump himself found issue with it in 2017.

On June 6, 2017, Haley went to Geneva to give the council a series of ultimatums. At the meeting, she said, “It’s hard to accept that this council has never considered a resolution on Venezuela, and yet it adopted five biased resolutions in March against a single country: Israel. It is essential that this council address its chronic anti-Israel bias if it is to have any credibility.”

Later in the day, she expanded on her grievances against the council at a speech she gave to the Graduate Institute of Geneva, noting that the UNHRC had, by then, passed “more than 70 resolutions targeting Israel” since its inception in 2006, but “just seven on Iran.” The UNHRC has passed more resolutions against Israel than the rest of the world’s countries combined, according to the Geneva-based UN Watch. 

© AFP 2018 / MAHMUD HAMS

UN General Assembly Votes to Condemn Israel’s ‘Excessive Force’ Against Gaza Protests

“This relentless, pathological campaign against a country that actually has a strong human rights record makes a mockery not of Israel, but of the council itself.”

She also called on the body to do two things: “Act to keep the worst human rights abusers from obtaining seats on the council,” and remove permanent Agenda Item 7, which requires that the council address the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories,” regularly when it meets.

Trump later echoed those demands in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 19, 2017, calling the inclusion of governments with “egregious human rights records” in the UNHRC a “massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations.” He also singled out North Korea and Iran for their hostility to Israel.

After the UNHRC, a body of 47 nations, adopted five resolutions condemning Israel on March 23, 2018, Haley warned “our patience is not limited,” reminding the body that “The United States continues to evaluate our membership in the Human Rights Council.” 

© REUTERS / Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

On Anniversary of Six-Day War, Israel Still ‘Breaking Every Moral Code’

Those resolutions called on governments to stop selling weapons to Israel; for Palestinian self-rule according to Israel and the Palestinian territories’ pre-1967 borders; for Israel to remove itself from the Golan Heights, which it has illegally occupied since the 1967 Six Day War; and for an end to Israeli settlements and human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Haley called the council “foolish and unworthy of its name” for treating Israel “worse than North Korea, Iran and Syria.”

The US ambassador hasn’t only struggled with the Human Rights Council, but also with the UN General Assembly and Security Council. On Wednesday, she failed to prevent the assembly from condemning Israel’s use of deadly force against Palestinians demonstrating in the Great Return March after having vetoed a similar resolution in June. She fired back against the vote, saying that for some, “attacking Israel is their favorite political sport.”

More than 120 Palestinians have been killed and more than 13,000 injured, many by live ammunition, since the start of the protest on March 30, Sputnik News reported. Haley previously told the UN Security Council that Israel acted with “restraint” in the protests. One Israeli soldier was “slightly wounded” in the protests, according to an IDF spokesperson. 

© AFP 2018 / Jewel SAMAD

US Vetoes UN Security Council Resolution Condemning Israel for Gaza Violence

The US has boycotted the UNHRC before, as former President George W Bush and his Ambassador to the UN John Bolton — now Trump’s national security adviser — opposed it from its outset in 2006. The Bush administration refused to run in its first election and also declined to participate the following year.

The main points of opposition then were the “focus on Israeli human rights violations while failing to address human rights abuses in other parts of the world,” according to the US Congressional Research Service’s 2009 “Issues for Congress” report on the UNHRC.

However, former President Barack Obama began to work with the council after his election in 2008, believing it was better to work on human rights issues within the council than from the outside, according to a similar report from 2017.

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UN Votes 120-8 to Condemn ‘Indiscriminate’ Israeli Violence Against Palestinians

Palestinian protesters evacuate a wounded youth near the Israeli border fence, east of Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, Monday, May 14, 2018. Thousands of Palestinians are protesting near Gaza’s border with Israel, as Israel prepared for the festive inauguration of a new U.S. Embassy in contested Jerusalem.

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by Jake Johnson

June 14th, 2018

“We cannot remain silent in the face of the most violent crimes and human rights violations being systematically perpetrated against our people,” said the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations.

Just hours after a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report accused Israel of showing “blatant disregard for Palestinian lives” and committing war crimes in its massacre of over 100 nonviolent demonstrators in Gaza over the past several weeks, the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution that condemns Israel’s “excessive, disproportionate, and indiscriminate” use of live fire against peaceful Palestinians.

“We cannot remain silent in the face of the most violent crimes and human rights violations being systematically perpetrated against our people,” Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the U.N., said in a speech following Wednesday’s vote.

The resolution denouncing Israel’s murderous behavior—which was approved by a 120-8 vote, with 45 abstentions—also requests proposals from the U.N. Secretary General “ways and means for ensuring the safety, protection, and well-being of the Palestinian civilian population under Israeli occupation.”

In a last-ditch effort to thwart the U.N. resolution, the United States tried to ram through an amendment blaming Hamas for initiating violence in the Gaza Strip. The amendment ultimately failed—probably because, as media analyst Adam Johnson points out, “100 percent of those killed [during the recent anti-occupation protests] were killed by Israel.”

Predictably, the U.S. voted against the final measure.

The U.N. vote came on the heels of HRW’s report documenting the persistent “pattern of Israeli forces shooting people who posed no imminent threat to life with live ammunition.”

In addition to backing the U.N. resolution that was approved on Wednesday, HRW called on “the International Criminal Court to open a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine.”

As Common Dreams reported, the U.N. Human Rights Council voted last month to dispatch war crimes investigators to probe Israel’s assault on peaceful demonstrators in Gaza.

“Israel’s use of lethal force when there was no imminent threat to life has taken a heavy toll in life and limb,” Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director, said in a statement on Wednesday. “The international community needs to rip up the old playbook, where Israel conducts investigations that mainly whitewash the conduct of its troops and the U.S. blocks international accountability with its Security Council veto, and instead impose real costs for such blatant disregard for Palestinian lives.”

 

Jared Kushner ‘annoyed’ with Kuwait’s Palestine resolution at UN

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http://www.aljazeera.com

June 7, 2018

Report says senior US adviser told Kuwait envoy initiative embarrassed him in front of American officials and allies.

Kushner reportedly told Kuwait’s ambassador its pro-Palestinian position embarrassed him in front of US officials [Abir/Sultan/EPA-EFE]

Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to US President Donald Trump, met Kuwait’s ambassador to Washington and expressed his frustration with the Gulf nation’s position on Palestine at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), according to Kuwait-based daily Al Rai.

Citing an unnamed US diplomatic source, the newspaper said on Wednesday that Kushner conveyed the Trump administration’s “annoyance” over a recently drafted Kuwaiti resolution that called for the protection of Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Kuwait drafted the resolution after dozens of Palestinian demonstrators were killed by Israeli forces last month in Gaza.

https://players.brightcove.net/665003303001/BkyLdqdhZ_default/index.html?videoId=5792914690001

WATCH: Thousands attend funeral for Gaza medic (1:45)

Kushner reportedly told ambassador Salem Abdullah al-Jaber al-Sabah that Kuwait’s position had personally embarrassed him in front of US officials and “friends of America who support [US] efforts to solve the crisis”.

The president’s son-in-law said in the five-minute meeting that he had been working alongside Egypt and Saudi Arabia on a joint Arab-US statement regarding the situation in Gaza before the Kuwaiti initiative.

According to the report, Kushner said he wanted Kuwait to maintain its role as mediator in the ongoing Gulf crisis, despite some parties’ objections to its diplomatic efforts.

The 37-year-old, who is also the president’s Middle East peace envoy, insisted that Hamas be considered a “terrorist” organisation, adding that the Palestinian group worked to advance Iran’s agenda in the region and did not have Palestinian people’s best interests at heart.

An official source at Kuwait’s foreign ministry dismissed Al Rai’s report, saying ties between Kuwait and the United States are “deep-rooted”.

Last week, the US was alone in voting down the Kuwait-drafted UNSC resolution on protecting Palestinians from Israeli live fire. Ten countries, including Russia and France, voted in favour of the resolution.

SOURCE: Al Jazeera News

UN Special Rapporteur: Millions of US Citizens Live in ‘Third World’ Conditions

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sputniknews.com

June 5, 2018

© AP Photo / Jae C. Hong

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – More than 40 million US citizens live in poverty and some five million live in third world conditions because of inhumane government policies, UN investigators revealed in a report.

“For one of the world’s wealthiest countries to have 40 million people living in poverty and over five million living in ‘Third World’ conditions is cruel and inhuman,” UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston said in the report released on Monday.

The Trump administration’s tax reform bill is facilitating inequality by attacking the US welfare system, Alston added. Poverty in the United States, he said, appears to be fueled by contempt along with a “winner takes all” mentality.

In addition, Alston pointed out that individuals in poverty are prone to being jailed. He argued that the US legal system is used to raise revenue for states instead of its mission to promote justice. About 11 million people are sent to local jails each year in the United States, he said.Alston highlighted that the United States now has the highest income inequality in the Western world, the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, and one of the lowest turnout rates in elections among developed countries.

The findings are the result of a UN fact-finding team that visited the US states of California, Alabama, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia and Washington, DC from December 1-15 in 2017, the report said.

Paul Craig Roberts: The Crisis Is Only In Its Beginning Stages

“The problem is that by turning the other cheek, Putin encourages more aggression from Washington. Putin is dealing with neoconservative psychopaths. He is not dealing with common sense.”

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http://www.paulcraigroberts.org

Paul Craig Roberts

April 17, 2018

The Crisis Is Only In Its Beginning Stages

Many, including Russia’s President Putin, have asked why the US launched an illegal attack on Syria prior to the chemical weapons inspectors examining the site of the alleged chemical attack.

This popular question completely misses the point. The US attack on Syria is a clear and indisputable war crime against a sovereign country regardless of whether Syria used a chemical weapon in driving the Washington supported terrorists from Douma. No one acted to stop Washington’s war crime. Some of Washington’s vassals, such as Germany and Italy, refused to participate in Washington’s war crime, but no one attempted to block it. The impotent UN Security Council, to which Russia is wasting its time appealing, the EU, NATO, Russia and China themselves did nothing to stop Washington’s Nazi era war crime.

Russia said that if Washington’s attack harmed its citizens, there would be military consequences, but Russia did not protect its ally Syria from the attack.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter as Washington’s attack was carefully conducted so as to have no effect except to serve as a face-saver for Trump. Apparently no one was killed and no damage was done to anything real except to a facility in which anti-venom for snake bites was being produced.

On the other hand, it does matter, because of the perception that the American presstitutes have created that it was a great victory for America over the evil Syrian government and the evil Russian government that supports them. This perception, which the presstitutes have created with their fake news, justifies the war crime and will lead to more attacks on Syria.

It is unlikely that the UN Security Council will condemn Washington, which pays 25% of the UN’s budget. Moreover, the Security Council is loaded up with Washington’s vassals, and they will not vote to censure their liegelord. Putin is wasting his time taking the matter to the Security Council, unless his purpose is to prove that every Western institution is completely corrupt. As most informed people already know this, I don’t understand the point of proving the known. Putin should read Eric Zuesse’s article before he puts too much faith in the UN. https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/04/17/how-us-has-virtually-destroyed-un.html

As I have written on a number of occasions, I admire Putin’s Christian character of sidestepping the beatings he continuously takes from Washington in order to save the world from the massive deaths of a world war. The problem is that by turning the other cheek, Putin encourages more aggression from Washington. Putin is dealing with neoconservative psychopaths. He is not dealing with common sense.

During the entirety of the Cold War no US ambassador to the UN spoke aggressively and disrespectfully to the Soviet representative as Nikki Haley speaks to the Russian ambassador. During the Cold War no American president would have tolerated Nikki Haley. The crazed bitch would have instantly been fired.

The Russian government is captured by delusion if the Russians believe that the US government, in which Nikki Haley is Trump’s choice to be America’s spokesperson to the world, in which the crazed neoconservative war monger John Bolton is a principal influence over US military and foreign policy, and in which the President himself is under threat of indictment for wanting to normalize relations with Russia, has any prospect of avoiding war.

The best chance of preventing the oncoming war is Russian-Chinese-Iranian unity and a defeat for American arms in a regional context not worth the Washington psychopaths launching of nuclear weapons. Until Washington is effectively resisted, Washington’s European vassals, the UN Security Council and the OPCW will stand with Washington. Once Washington experiences a defeat, NATO will dissolve and with this dissolution Washington’s ability to threaten other countries will lose its cover and evaporate.

Syria 202

Possibly this is propaganda from those on Assad’s side, but let’s ask ourselves if this could be true. We are being lied to on a daily basis from our media and our governments. Nothing should surprise us anymore.

The West is literally stealing Syria’s assets, oil, under the guise of freedom and democracy. Bullshit, it’s theft and robbery. It is a war crime. Where the hell is the United Nations?

 

Syed Askar

April 16, 2018

Interesting facts about #Syria..

“•The Assad family belongs to the tolerant Islam of Alawid orientation.
• Syrian women have the same rights as men to study, health and education.
• Syria women are not forced to wear the burka. The Sharia (Islamic law) is unconstitutional.
• Syria is the only Arab country with a secular constitution and does not tolerate Islamic extremist movements.
• Roughly 10% of the Syrian population belongs to one of the many Christian denominations, all fully integrated in Syrian political and social life.
• In other Arab countries the Christian population is less than 1% due to sustained hostility.
• Syria has banned genetically modified (GMO) seeds, stating his decision was made in order “to preserve human health,”
• Syria alongside Lebanon have an opening to Western society and culture like no other Arab country.
• Its media and universities openly debate the global power elite’s influence in things. This means that they fully grasp the fact that real power in the West lies not in the White House but rather with the complex and powerful grid of elite think-tanks and central banks.
• Throughout history there have been five popes of Syrian origin. Religious tolerance is unique in the area.
• Prior to the western sponsored current civil war, Syria was one of the only peaceful countries in the area, having avoided major wars or internal conflicts.
• Syria was the only country that admitted Iraqi refugees without any social, political or religious discrimination
• Syria clearly and unequivocally opposes Zionism and the Israel government.
• Following a massive oil find in Syria’s Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967, Netanyahu recently asked Obama to recognize its annexation of the territory. To consolidate its hold, plans are afoot to quadruple Israeli settler numbers to 100,000.

And the most two important points:
• Syria is one of the only countries in the Middle East without debts to the International Monetary Fund (Pre-invasion Libya & Iran the only others)
• Syria is the only Mediterranean country which remains the owner of its oil company, with an oil reserve of 2,500 million barrels, the operation of which has avoided privatization and is reserved exclusively for state-owned enterprises.

So now ask yourself, why are we truly attempting to overthrow yet another government? What are we hoping to fix here?

If the recent invasions and illegal assassinations of Presidents like Qaddafi and Saddam have taught us anything, it should be the understanding of the blow-back effect of such lawless actions by the West and the vacuum of chaos that always supersedes it.

Debt Conquer. Invent a reason to invade and destroy, then offer $Trillions in IMF funding to rebuild… conveniently paid back by control of your oil fields and the free access to build gas pipelines to the west.” #SyriaHoax

Caught in a lie, US and allies bomb Syria the night before international inspectors arrive

RT.com

April 15, 2018

A Syrian firefighter inside the destroyed Scientific Research Center in Damascus, Syria April 14, 2018 © Omar Sanadiki / Reuters

The US, Britain and France trampled international law to launch missiles against Syria, claiming to have “evidence” of the government’s use of chemical weapons. That evidence is based on terrorist lies.

‘Let’s start by destroying US chemical weapons’: Russia responds to Trump’s plea to ‘end arms race’

The irony? Both America and its close ally Israel have used chemical weapons on civilians. The US has attacked civilians in Vietnam and Iraq, to name but two countries, with chemical weapons.

In 2009, I was living in Gaza and documenting Israel’s war crimes when Israel bombed civilians all over Gaza with white phosphorous. These were civilians with nowhere to run or hide, including civilians who had fled their homes and taken shelter in a UN-recognized school. I myself documented numerous instances of Israel’s use of white phosphorous.

If this doesn’t outrage American citizens, the billions of US taxpayers’ dollars sent to Israel and spent on the bombing of sovereign nations — and not on America’s impoverished, nor on affordable health care — should outrage.

However, as author Jonathan Cook noted, the issue is not merely Trump’s threats to Syria:

“There is bipartisan support for this madness. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic leadership in the US, and much of the parliamentary Labour party in the UK, are fully on board with these actions. In fact, they have been goading Trump into launching attacks.”

By not attacking Russian forces in Syria this time, the US narrowly avoided a direct military confrontation with Russia, one which would have had global ramifications, to say the least.

The question now is: will the regime-change alliance be stupid and cruel enough to support yet another false flag chemical attack in their unending efforts to depose the Syrian president, or will they give up the game and allow Syria’s full return to peace? The US and allies claim their concern for Syrian civilians, but do everything in their power to ensure civilians suffer from terrorism and sanctions.

Eva Bartlett is a freelance journalist and rights activist with extensive experience in the Gaza Strip and Syria. Her writings can be found on her blog, In Gaza.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.