UN Secretary General: "I will ask the General Assembly ... to Strip Israel of its Membership"

**** Update ****

It looks like the following is a send-up - mores the pity. There is even a pdf of the "statement" in realistic UN official-looking format here . So, as of right now, my opinion of Ban Ki-Moon remains un-revised
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This not insignificant event occurred on Monday of this week and yet to date I have seen no mention of anywhere in the MSM. There is a view that the US has already given up on the UN and is grooming NATO to effectively supplant it. In my opinion this lends credence to that view.

Ban Ki-Moon risks becoming persona-non-grata in New York/Washington and, although I have hitherto considered him a spineless place man it looks like I may have to revise that opinion. The very best of luck to him is all I can say.

United Nations General Assembly,
New York, NY
11 May 2009

Mr. President
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

With each passing year, we come closer to our past. Every year brings with it momentous anniversaries of events that shaped our world. For example, we have recently marked the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and of the United Nations itself. These two events, inextricably linked, form the basis of what we have come to know as the modern era, the post-war era.

For me, as Secretary–General, looking back on where the UN started and where it is now has a special importance, for I am now charged with guiding the world body through unknown and uncertain territory. “Terrorism” has long since replaced “arms control” and “détente” as the focus of international security, yet the term defies definition. One country’s terrorist is another country’s revolutionary hero. Some insist that terrorists are opposed to democracy, but we have all seen democracies behave like terrorists.

In many ways, the world today does not seem to be very removed from the barbarity of world war. The invasion of Iraq has lasted longer than World War II, and more tons of bombs have been dropped on that poor country than all the bombs dropped in that great war. The International Declaration of Human Rights, so prized and venerated by men and women of honour everywhere, stands as an impotent relic of a forgotten time because conquest, cruelty, and arrogance are still with us and growing stronger.

For all of the good the UN has accomplished since its founding, and there have been successes, the sheer magnitude of human suffering and violations of international law that have occurred and are still occurring must also be taken into account.

Few people know that Israel is the only state to be given a conditional admission. Under General Assembly Resolution 273, Israel was admitted on the condition that it grant all Palestinians the right to return to their homes and receive compensation for lost or damaged property, according to General Assembly Resolution 194 paragraph 11. Suffice to say, Israel has never lived up to these terms, and never intended to.

For 60 years Israel has violated its terms of admission, and for 60 years the UN has done nothing about it. It has watched as Israel heaped misery upon misery on Palestine, and violated international law with impunity.

After “Operation Cast Lead,” no person, no country, no democracy can look at Israel without thinking of the inhuman slaughter and destruction committed by the axis powers in World War II, though one could have said the same about numerous past massacres. What atrocities might the world have been spared if the UN had refused to admit Israel 60 years ago?

Of course, the immediate post war world was a different time. The world had just witnessed the horrors of Hitler’s racist excesses, and collective Western guilt for the Holocaust dictated attitudes toward the idea of Jewish state. Even the UN could not withstand the moral pressure.

On Nov. 29, 1947, it passed General Assembly Resolution 181, “The Partition Plan,” to carve a Jewish state out of Arab Palestine. However, it was never ratified by the Security Council, and so does not exist in law, which means the UN played no role in the creation of Israel. Nevertheless, “The Partition Plan” was utterly illegal and a violation of the UN Charter, because the UN had no right or power to take land from one people and give it to another.

If it hopes to play a meaningful role in the 21st century, the UN must do more than simply promise to enact reforms. It must search deep within its soul to redress the fundamental violations of its founding principles, which have long since ceased to have any force. That recommitment must begin now, for it was 60 years ago today, May 11, 1949, that Israel became a member of the UN. The UN cannot hope to achieve any measure of peace or justice as long as it condones war crimes, which it does every day that Israel is allowed to flout its terms of admission.

The past cannot be undone, but the future can change. As its newly elected Secretary-General, I promise that the UN will no longer be a passive enabler of genocide. Therefore, I will ask the General Assembly to meet in special session at the earliest possible time to strip Israel of its membership.

Ordinarily, a motion to expel a member nation would have to come at the recommendation of the Security Council, but this is not an ordinary motion. Because Israel is in violation of its terms of admission, it is not a member in good standing, so the UN has every right to declare General Assembly Resolution 273 null and void. Since Israel’s membership depends on adherence to that resolution, its expulsion is automatic.

Essentially, the unavoidable, lamentable truth of the last six decades is that the UN has been a moral and political failure because it has refused to enforce its own rules and defend the Charter. Nothing the UN does can have any value as long as this illegitimate member occupies a place in the General Assembly. I want the UN to have value.

I count on your support.
Thank you very much.

Sadistic . . . violent . . . inhuman.

The US really has lost it.

There are those who clearly see the whole abuse of prisoners thing for what it is: Sadistic, violent, inhuman behaviour that is utterly beyond the pale - FULL STOP! - The problem is that the facts are so unacceptable to the self-image of Jane and and Jo sixpack and their 'Mom-an-apple-pie' Real America, that it can no more be squarely faced than can the implications of 911 truth or the murders of JFK, and MLK.

The result?

Outrage - absolute OUTRAGE. But not at the relentless systematic torture and abuse of prisoners, rather, at the prospect of further evidence of it being released in the form of official photos and videos. A sort of 'kill-the-messenger' syndrome with a twist.

So what does shiny new President 'Change you can believe in' Obama do? why cave in to the outrage and keep them under lock and key - naturally. Which is simply further confirmation of the horrific, obscene depravity of it all.

This in reply to a question about them at an ACLU convention from Seymour Hersh:

“Some of the worse that happened that you don’t know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men … . The women were passing messages saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened. Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has"

Meanwhile that reptile Cheyney is touring the studios explaining how torture 'saved American Lives' , which bad as it is, is not the half of it. It seems that it's first persistent use was aimed entirely at establishing a link between Saddam Hussain and Al Qaida to justify the invasion of Iraq. And that is EXACTLY what it did - falsely - with the 'confession' of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi who finally died in his Libyan prison last week. A confession used by Colin Powell in his infamous pre-invasion address to the UN

as Paul Krugman says in today's New York Times:

Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the non-existent link. There’s a word for this: it’s evil.

'BLOWBACK?' - Here's what it means:

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to NBC’s David Gregory:

"Osama Bin Laden? We Knew He was Your Operator"

....or 'as ye sow - so shall ye reap.

Congressional oversight of the Fed? - It's non-existent.

Elizabeth Coleman worked for 20 years in the Office of the Inspector General of the US Federal Reserve Bank before becoming Inspector General herself. She's no Rookie in other words. In that capacity she was questioned at a the House Oversight Committee session by - among others - Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) about the Fed's dispersal of bailout monies.

Just watch this amazing exchange.



A revelation eh? - or perhaps not to those who clearly understand just how crooked the whole system is. As a perceptive contributor to a list I follow observed:

"Even tricky Dickie Nixon was never as obviously corrupt in his stonewalling. It couldn't be more clear that the Federal Reserve is hiding trillions of dollars of corrupt off-balance-sheet gaming and providing funds for corrupt institutions somewhere. this is not a comedy, nor incompetence. This lady has worked 20 years in the office of inspector general of the fed. She has been told to say absolutely nothing. I think she does a terrible job of it. A smarter actor might have sounded like they were going to do something or had some information. But it's pretty clear that the Congress doesn't want to point out the corruption and cans of worms at the fed cause they're all in it together. Scumbags!"

Pipelineistan goes Af-Pak

Cracking stuff from one of my favourite Geo-Political commentators, Pepe Escobar. Nothing really new in it but it does a superb job of integrating and explaining the seething cauldron of disparate interests that comprise the rapidly developing 'Great Game' in Central and South Asia. It's too long to post here in full but is published in Toms Dispatch and Asia Times and well worth the time to read and digest - IMHO.

Here's a brief snippet:

The Real Afghan War

In the ever-shifting New Great Game in Eurasia, a key question -- why Afghanistan matters -- is simply not part of the discussion in the United States. (Hint: It has nothing to do with the liberation of Afghan women.) In part, this is because the idea that energy and Afghanistan might have anything in common is verboten.

And yet, rest assured, nothing of significance takes place in Eurasia without an energy angle. In the case of Afghanistan, keep in mind that Central and South Asia have been considered by American strategists crucial places to plant the flag; and once the Soviet Union collapsed, control of the energy-rich former Soviet republics in the region was quickly seen as essential to future U.S. global power. It would be there, as they imagined it, that the U.S. Empire of Bases would intersect crucially with Pipelineistan in a way that would leave both Russia and China on the defensive.

Think of Afghanistan, then, as an overlooked subplot in the ongoing Liquid War. After all, an overarching goal of U.S. foreign policy since President Richard Nixon's era in the early 1970s has been to split Russia and China. The leadership of the SCO has been focused on this since the U.S. Congress passed the Silk Road Strategy Act five days before beginning the bombing of Serbia in March 1999. That act clearly identified American geo-strategic interests from the Black Sea to western China with building a mosaic of American protectorates in Central Asia and militarizing the Eurasian energy corridor.

... And to think, we virtually NEVER hear the words 'Gas', 'Oil' or 'Pipeline' from Western politicians and the MSM in the context of NATO/UK/US involvements and wars in the region. It is a telling illustration of just how crass the world view of the bulk of US/Western populations is that we continue to lap up the sentimental, fearful, patriotic jingoistic 'War on Terror' crap that passes for serious analysis of what is actually going on in the world.