When the UN is being used by bad people for destructive purposes more than it enforces peace, then it is time to think about not making Americans pay their tax money to fund this institution. A simple cost-benefit analysis seems badly needed here.
Found at Politically Incorrect. The young man in the video is Hillel Neuerfrom and is the Executive Director of UN Watch.
Elizabeth Cassidy of Opinio Juris compared this speech to numerous other speeches, and wonders why this is...
The First-Ever "Inadmissible" Speech at the UN Human Rights CouncilHere is a video showing all the attacks, lies, and insults that are admissible:
On Friday, UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer gave a speech at the Human Rights Council sharply criticizing its record of ignoring gross human rights violations worldwide unless they can be blamed on Israel. [...] In an unprecedented reaction, the Council's Chair, Luis Alfonso De Alba of Mexico, refused to thank UN Watch for its statement and said that it was "inadmissible." Ours is the only speech from that day that was not posted on the Council's extranet. So much for freedom of opinion and expression, in the Council at least. (The video of the speech is on YouTube and, through word of mouth and the blogosphere, it has now received over 90,000 hits.)
Over the past year in the Council, ambassadors have called each other, UN experts, and representatives of NGOs "ignorant" and other similar insults. Sudan and its allies have denied the existence of human rights violations in Darfur, and Iran has denied the Holocaust. Nigeria has defended the use of the death penalty by stoning against homosexuals. The invective against Israel has included accusations of "an Israeli Holocaust against the Palestinian people," a "thirst for the blood" of civilians, and of being "an apartheid regime" and even "an invader from the planet Mars." The United States has been accused of running a "concentration camp" at Guantanamo Bay and of "genocide" against Cuba. The United Kingdom has been called a "colonial slave-master." Sweden has been accused of "ethnic cleansing" against anyone who does not have the coloring of "former Viking conquerors." Yet all of these statements, and many others like them, have been thanked and deemed admissible by the Council Chair.
Prequel: The Speeches not Banned at UN Human Rights Council.
The major difference: It is OK to insult Israel, and occasionally the council, but it is not OK for Israel to point out attacks, lies, and insults against Israel. The hypocrisy is repulsive.
So, with all the damage the UN is doing, what exactly is the good it's doing that would justify the bad it's doing and the UN's continuing existence? I just don't see it.