Tag: united nations

Germans will walk out if Ahmadinejad speech involves Holocaust denial. Huzzah.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) I have a problem with this.

Germany will walk out of the U.N. General Assembly if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust in a speech he will give Wednesday, and it wants other European Union countries to do the same, the foreign ministry said.

My problem with this is that intolerance to Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism should be so instinctive and reflexive that nobody would have let Ahmadinejad talk at the UN in the first place. The Canadians aren’t bothering to wait for the inevitable vileness; they’re just going to walk out (via Instapundit).  So on that curve the German response gets down graded from its original A to a B-.

Mind you, that’s a heck of a lot better than the F that we’re getting. Did somebody at the UN with a malignant sense of humor schedule this one?  The President is going to speak the same day as Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Libya’s Gadhafi and Zimbabwe’s Mugabe; you have to wonder whether Syria’s al-Assad and/or North Korea’s Il-sung Jong-Il had scheduling conflicts.  Doesn’t anybody at the White House check people’s work before they send it out?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Helmsley Hotels to Ahmadinejad: Scram.

(Via Drudge) They run a respectable establishment, you understand.

The New York Helmsley Hotel last night abruptly canceled a long-planned banquet for next week after finding out that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was scheduled to attend and speak, The Post has learned.

Helmsley representatives told Ahmadinejad to beat it after being informed by the security group United Against Nuclear Iran that the Israel-hating, Holocaust-denying America basher was going to be in the house next Thursday.

I understand that the United States government felt the need at the time to keep the United Nations HQ somewhere where we could keep an eye on them – but there’s still something that grates every time we have to let someone like Ahmadinejad use the facilities at Manhattan. People like Ahmadinejad don’t deserve Manhattan.

Then again, neither does the UN, really.

Crossposted to RedState.

North Korea to UN: Apologize, or we’ll test some nukes.

…wait, what?

Did something get lost in translation? – Because there seems to be a couple of gaps there in the logic chain.

N Korea threatens nuclear tests

North Korea has threatened to carry out nuclear missile tests unless the UN Security Council apologises for its condemnation of a recent rocket launch.

Pyongyang said it would be compelled to take self-defence measures “including nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests” if no apology was made.

There are times when I suspect that the North Korean regime is deliberately pretending to be barking mad insane, solely out of some twisted sense of humor. I actually don’t know if that is preferable to the alternative – which is that fifty years of combined isolationism and Marxism* can cause actual brain damage in the general population; at least that alternative offers the hope that their engineers won’t be able to put a real bomb together – but it does explain the disconnect here. Which is, for those who are wondering, that informing a world that doesn’t want you to have missiles that can hit Beijing, Tokyo, or Honolulu that you will immediately start trying to make missiles that can hit Beijing, Tokyo, or Honolulu unless you get an apology from the planet over them raising a fuss about your program to create missiles that can hit Beijing, Tokyo, or Honolulu.

Yes, that’s the North Korean position. Think about it too long, and your brain starts to hurt. Which may be the point.

Moe Lane

PS: Out of idle curiosity: is the White House planning to do anything about this, aside from not visit the West Coast for a while?

*Remember, kids: friends don’t let friends go Commie.

Crossposted to RedState.

I have a few responses to UN SecGen’s ‘deadbeat’ comment…

…(via Jules Crittenden) it’s just that most of them are foul. Which, by a fascinating coincidence, is precisely the word that I’d use to describe the actions that the UN bureaucracy often finds itself involved in, usually involving children and teenagers.

I will promise this, though: if the President decides to go a little further than ‘unfortunate‘ I won’t stop him.  If he decides that our current economic crisis requires that we delay paying off the UN for a couple of quarters – or years – I promise not to say a word of criticism.  Heck, I’ll even unbend enough to say “Well done.”

Moe Lane

PS: Actually, I do have one semi-witty response: “Ban Ki Moon, do you know what the real estate value is for the land at Turtle Bay?  Because I bet that Mayor Bloomberg does.”

Crossposted to RedState.