Jesus, It's ALL a Fucking Joke

Sadly, it isn't funny.

The U.N.’s 2015 “Children and Armed Conflict” report originally listed the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen under “parties that kill or maim children” and “parties that engage in attacks on schools and/or hospitals.” The report, which was based on the work of U.N. researchers in Yemen, attributed 60 percent of the 785 children killed and 1,168 injured to the bombing coalition.

[...]

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon publicly acknowledged Thursday that he removed the Saudi-led coalition [from the list] — 72 hours after it was published — due to a financial threat to defund United Nations programs.

The secretary-general didn’t name the source of the threat, but news reports have indicated it came directly from the Saudi government.

[...]

Saudi Arabia is one of the U.N.’s largest donors in the Middle East, giving hundreds of millions of dollars a year to U.N. food programs in Syria and Iraq.

[...]

Ban said on Monday that he was revising the report to “review jointly the cases and numbers cited in the text,” in order to “reflect the highest standards of accuracy possible.”

But on Thursday, he described his real motivation. “The report describes horrors no child should have to face,” Ban said at a press conference. “At the same time, I also had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would defund many U.N. programs.

[...]

Saudi Ambassador to the U.N. Abdallah al-Mouallimi, who held his own press conference afterward, offered his own back-handed confirmation of what happened. “We didn’t use threats,” he said, “but such listing will obviously have an impact on our relations with the U.N.”

  The Intercept

Understood.

“It is not in our style, it is not in our genes, it is not in our culture to use threats and intimidation,” he concluded.

No, of course not. We didn't mean to imply it was.

Watch your back, Ban.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Among Other Things

The United Nations chief has said that the grounding of the Bolivian president's plane in Vienna on suspicion that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was aboard was “unfortunate”.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said on Tuesday that “it was important to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.''

“A head of state and his or her aircraft enjoy immunity and inviolability.''

  alJazeera

Obviously, to the contrary, he does not.

Spain has acknowledged on Tuesday that a US request had led it to delay approving an overflight by Bolivia's president.

[...]

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo was asked by reporters whether the alert had come from the United States.

He replied: "Inter alia (among other things)."

I wonder what those might be.

The Bolivian government says the United States knew that Snowden was not on the plane and simply wanted to intimidate Morales because of his outspoken criticism of US policies.

Inter alia. THOSE things being, to let the world know that we don’t give a damn for international laws, and that we have ALL their teats in our wringer, and to let any would-be whistleblowers know that the world can’t protect them from the US.

It’s not a question of whether or not Snowden was on President Morales’ plane.  Even if he HAD been, the President of any country supposedly is, within his property, as Milktoast Ban says, inviolable. Heads of states and even their diplomats can even commit crimes and have immunity from prosecution.

In the United States, if a person with immunity is alleged to have committed a crime or faces a civil lawsuit, the Department of State alerts the government that the diplomat works for. The Department of State also asks the home country to waive immunity of the alleged offender so that the complaint can be moved to the courts. If immunity is not waived, prosecution cannot be undertaken. However, the Department of State still has the discretion to ask the diplomat to withdraw from her or his duties in the United States.

[...]

A group of diplomats and the office space in which they work are referred to as a mission. Creditors cannot sue missions individually to collect money they owe.

[...]

In the summer of 1994 U.S. diplomat Victor Marrero reportedly complained to the United Nations secretariat that foreign diplomats' debts in the United States were $5.3 million. The New Yorker later reported that a well-informed source had said the figure had risen "closer to $7 million."

[...]

Diplomats and their families have also been known to use diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution for criminal behavior. For example, in a 1983 case the New York City Police Department suspected a diplomat's son of 15 different rapes. The son was allowed to leave the United States without ever being taken to court because he claimed diplomatic immunity. If diplomatic immunity is used as a shield, the police cannot prosecute, no matter how serious the crime may be.

  The Free Dictionary

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Good Boy

The former NSA contractor Edward Snowden misused his right to digital access and has created problems that outweigh the benefits of public disclosure, the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has said.

Speaking to a gathering of the foreign affairs committee of the Icelandic parliament in Reykjavik on Tuesday, Ban said that in his personal opinion "the Snowden case is something I consider to be misuse." The UN chief added that the opening up of digital communications should not be "misused in such a way as Snowden did".

  Guardian

And suddenly, American politicians and rednecks will be proclaiming the authority of the UN.

The UN chief added that the opening up of digital communications should not be "misused in such a way as Snowden did".

The way NSA is misusing it must be okay, though.