UN rights council delves into US voter I.D. laws

The controversy over requiring voters to provide photo IDs has reached the world stage.
The United Nations Human Rights Council is investigating the issue of American election laws at its gathering on minority rights in Geneva, Switzerland.. This, despite the fact that some members of the council have only in the past several years allowed women to vote, and one member, Saudi Arabia, still bars women from the voting booth completely.
Officials from the NAACP are presenting their case against U.S. voter ID laws, arguing to the international diplomats that the requirements disenfranchise voters and suppress the minority vote.


Eight states have passed voter ID laws in the past year, voter ID proposals are pending in 32 states and the Obama administration has recently moved to block South Carolina and Texas from enacting their voter ID measures.
"This really is a tactic that undercuts the growth of your democracy," said Hillary Shelton, the NAACP's senior vice president for advocacy, about voter photo ID requirements.
In a Fox News interview prior to his trip, Shelton said the message from the NAACP delegation to the Human Rights Council is that the photo ID law "undercuts the integrity of our government, if you allow it to happen. It's trickery, it's a sleight-of-hand. We're seeing it happen here and we don't want it to happen to you, and we are utilizing the U.N. as a tool to make sure that we are able to share that with those countries all over the world."
The United Nations has no legal jurisdiction over the American electoral system, which Shelton acknowledges. Asked whether he thinks that the U.N. should be involved in domestic American laws, he answered, "No, not specifically. The U.N. should certainly be involved in sharing a best practice for the world."
"We're the greatest country on the face of the earth, but we can be better still," he said.
The NAACP had scheduled two American citizens to present their claims at the U.N. panel who, the group says, worry they will be disenfranchised by the requirement to present a photo ID to vote. The civil rights group says one, Kemba Smith Pradia, was convicted of a drug-related offense and is concerned that if she moves back to Virginia from the Midwest, state law will block her voting because of her record, even though she was granted clemency by President Bill Clinton.
A second American, Austin Alex, is a Texas Christian University student. The NAACP says he is worried that he will be barred from voting because he only holds an out-of-state driver's license and a non-government student ID, not a Texas issued photo ID.
But supporters of photo ID requirements argue that states provide such identifications for free, and in some cases, voters can cast provisional or absentee ballots that do not even require a photo ID. The NAACP disputes those claims.
In 2008, the United States Supreme Court upheld the voter photo ID law enacted in Indiana.
The U.N. Human Rights Council members include communist China and Cuba. In addition, several Arab nations are on the council that have only granted the right to vote to women in recent years, such as Kuwait in 2005 and Qatar in 2003. Women in the Republic of Moldova have had the right to vote for less than 20 years.
Council member Saudi Arabia announced six months ago that women will be granted the right to vote, but that change does not go into effect until 2015.
"The idea that this is a human rights abuse is ridiculous," said Hans von Spakovsky, a voter fraud expert and senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, in Washington, D.C.
"The UN allowing this to take place under their roof makes them, unfortunately, complicit in what really is a publicity stunt by the NAACP, and I think it wastes their time, when they should be going after real and sustained human rights abuses like the things going on in horrible places, like North Korea."
Spakovsky, who supports voter photo ID laws, says it is a hypocritical and meaningless waste of time to present a case against American electoral laws at the UN forum.
"I think the leadership of the NAACP is, quite frankly, doing a disservice to American citizens and the democracy that we have here, by going abroad to the Human Rights Council, which is filled with dictatorships and other countries that actually and really abuse human rights."
He called the council's weighing of U.S. laws "an insult to the United States that the NAACP thinks we should be getting advice from those kinds of countries, which are not democracies, on how to administer elections in this country.”
But Shelton argues that the NAACP's presence at the Geneva conference can teach other nations how to improve their electoral systems.
"We can learn a lot from those who haven't gone through as much as we have," he said.
"Everyone has a different struggle, but there's lessons to learn from whoever we come across ... but there's also some things I think we can still help teach the rest of the world."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/14/un-delves-into-us-voter-id-laws/#ixzz1p7VNs7yx

Obama administration demands UN reform -- but won't threaten to withhold funding

With presidential elections looming, the Obama administration has launched a high-profile campaign in favor of belt-tightening at the United Nations -- but without the threat of withholding U.S. funding for the sprawling world organization.

The aim, at least in part, is to preempt even tougher action proposed by the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, which calls for selective U.S. funding cutoffs unless specific demands for U.N. reform and transparency are met.

Unlike the Republican proposals, the administration’s campaign, spearheaded by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. for Management and Reform Joseph Torsella, explicitly rules out withholding of U.S. financial aid and counts on persuasion to propel its agenda of efficiency, transparency and openness. Whether U.N. bureaucrats and their developing world supporters will be impressed remains to be seen.

Torsella’s effort -- and even his appointment -- nonetheless represents a sea change on the part of the administration, which did not even have a full-time diplomat assigned to the reform effort until Torsella was sworn in last April. Even so, Torsella’s expertise in the area is newly minted: prior to his swearing in, he was head of the Pennsylvania State Board of Education. Prior to that, he served as founder and head of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Currently, the U.S. pays 22 percent of the U.N. Secretariat’s $5.2 billion regular biennial budget, and 27 percent of peacekeeping, as well as greater or lesser amounts of a host of other programs. Last year, the State Department said the U.S. gave U.N. funds, programs and agencies about $7.4 billion, but that may still understate U.S. largesse.

Among the main elements of the reform campaign:

-- significant future cuts in the fast-expanding, multibillion-dollar U.N. “regular” budget; and a “comprehensive reform” of the U.N.’s “broken” budget process.

-- a pay freeze for top U.N. officials, mirroring a freeze in existence for top U.S. civil servants ordained in 2010, and a staff reduction through attrition to “right-size” the bureaucracy by 2015. The U.S. first tried to get the freeze installed last September; instead, top U.N. officials in New York got a roughly 3 percent pay hike.

-- a comparative study of “seriously distorted” U.N. pay for senior officials, who now earn, according to U.S. calculations, nearly 130 percent of their U.S. equivalents, and a “new look” at U.N. benefits ranging from health care to vacations to pensions.

-- greater scope and protection for the U.N.’s internal watchdogs to look into waste, fraud and mismanagement, and publicly air the results, along with greater openness in U.N. budget proceedings.

-- a louder and more public effort to keep human rights and nuclear proliferation outlaws like Iran and North Korea out of U.N. committee chairmanships and other key positions -- roles they have recently won.

-- a coordinated effort by the relative handful of U.N. donor countries -- roughly a score pay most of the U.N.’s bills -- to force the hydra-headed U.N. bureaucracy to focus on better results and “real world outcomes,” as Torsella put it, rather than bureaucratic process.

Click here for the full U.N. reform agenda.

Just how convincing the reform campaign will be is unclear. The hidebound, bloated and inefficient U.N. is already suffering, according to internal documents obtained by Fox News, from a “crisis in confidence” in the 43,700-member organization headed by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has been assembling his own variations on a reform agenda.

Ban, however, is largely responsible for the U.N. hiring binge that the U.S. now wants to restrain.

At the same time, he has been publicly excoriated by key U.N. budget committees for a “failure of management” in the continuing fiasco of a high-tech, $315 million computer and software system that is supposed to be the key to future U.N. management reform. The project, adrift for more than a year, is now three years behind its original schedule and not slated for completion until 2015.

Deploying 21st century information technology to improve the U.N.’s performance is nonetheless another mainstay of the Obama administration’s reform offensive.

Ban was also rebuffed by U.N. member states in a bid to gain greater authority over the micromanaged U.N. budget process by increasing his ability to move unspent money around in the organization at his own discretion to meet new or unexpected needs. The U.N. General Assembly currently allows Ban to spend up to $10 million that way each year; Ban had asked for an increase to $15 million. A key U.N. budget oversight committee said Ban had not put forward “any new arguments or rationale” for his case.

For its part, Ban’s office maintains that his proposal has not been rejected and will be taken up again in April. “We therefore have to await the related discussion and the resulting outcome,” a spokesman for Ban told Fox News.

So far, the biggest victory claimed by Torsella and his U.N. reformers is a slight reduction in the U.N.’s recently passed biennial “regular” budget, to $5.15 billion for 2012-2013.

It was, Torsella told the Washington branch of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations late last week, “the first U.N. regular budget since 1998 that’s gone down in comparison to the previous budget’s actual expense.” Torsella said the cut amounted to a 5 percent U.N. budget decrease compared with the previous biennium, and at least a $260 million saving.

Torsella’s comparison, however, is slightly misleading. U.N. spending totals have always tended to grow through a process of programming creep as the budget cycle progresses. Compared to the starting, rather than the ending, point of the 2010-2011 budget cycle, the new U.N. proposal is only about $44 million, or 0.8 percent, lower than at the same point in the previous cycle. All the remaining savings are still speculative.

The administration is “taking baby steps forward” on the U.N. reform agenda, says Brett Schaefer, an expert on U.N. financing at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “It’s still not nearly what we need to see.” U.S. claims that it has successfully held the line on U.N. spending in the current budget, he adds, are “jumping the gun.”

The administration’s transparency agenda has also not fared well out of the starting gate. An effort by the head of the U.N.’s watchdog Office of Internal Oversight Service (OIOS) to post all of her units audits publicly online was held up by what Torsella called “a small group of member states,” though the U.S. Mission to the U.N. claims to post most of them on its own website.

The last posted OIOS audits on the USUN website yesterday, however, dated from September 2011, and the posting was not comprehensive.

Whatever its limitations, the administration’s reform effort has been loudly backed by such pro-U.N. groups as the lobbying subsidiary of the Better World Fund, originally funded by billionaire Ted Turner to further the U.N.’s agenda, and whose board is heavily studded with current and former U.N. officials and officeholders. (Many of the same board members also sit on the board of the U.N. Foundation, which Turner also chairs, and which fund-raises and creates partnerships to support U.N. initiatives.)

All of those groups vociferously oppose any notion of using U.S. financial contributions to the U.N. as a club in the reform effort.

Exactly the opposite approach, however, is taken by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House International Affairs committee, and one of the world organization’s sharpest congressional critics, who insists that “the U.N. is fundamentally flawed and needs fundamental reform, not tactical tinkering.”

“While I appreciate Ambassador Torsella’s efforts,” she told Fox News, “from the beginning the administration’s strategy has fallen short of the fundamental reforms we need.” It “does not use our strongest leverage -- our contributions -- to demand real change. To the contrary, the administration surrenders our leverage by insisting that we pay our contributions to the U.N. in full, no matter what. As long as this continues, real reform efforts are destined to fail.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/01/25/obama-administration-launches-campaign-to-demand-un-reform-transparency/#ixzz1kVhDiWBu

UN visit to Tehran set for Jan 28

VIENNA (AP) - A senior U.N. nuclear agency team will visit Tehran on Jan. 28 with Iran saying it is ready after years of refusal to discuss allegations that it was involved in secret nuclear weapons work, diplomats said Thursday.Diplomats have previously said that International Atomic Energy Agency officials were discussing such a trip with their Iranian counterparts. But before the diplomats' comments Thursday, no date - or indication that Iran was ready to talk about the allegations - had been mentioned.Any follow-through on the part of Iran on its reported pledge to discuss nuclear arms suspicions would be significant.For more than three years, Tehran has blocked IAEA attempts to follow up on U.S. and other intelligence alleging covert Iranian work on nuclear arms, dismissing the charges as baseless and insisting all its nuclear activities were peaceful and under IAEA purview.Faced with Iranian stonewalling, the IAEA summarized its body of information in November, in a 13-page document drawing on 1,000 pages of intelligence. It stated then for the first time that some of the alleged experiments can have no other purpose than developing nuclear weapons.Iran continues to deny the charges and no change in its position is expected during the Tehran talks with IAEA officials. But even a decision to enter a discussion over the allegations would be a major departure from outright refusal to talk about them - and create hopes of future progress in the investigation.Two diplomats told The Associated Press that Iranian officials had suggested they were ready to talk about the issue during recent meetings with officials of the Vienna-based IAEA. They asked for anonymity because their information was confidential.Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's chief IAEA delegate, declined to be drawn on what would be discussed in Tehran, indicating in comments to The AP that it was too early to go public with details.The composition of the IAEA team, as described by one of the diplomats, also reflects the significance the U.N. nuclear monitoring agency attaches to the visit, which is expected to conclude in the first few days of February.Normally such trips are made by Deputy Director General Herman Nackaerts, in charge of the Iran nuclear file, and more junior officials of his department. But the diplomat said that this time Nackaerts will be accompanied by Assistant Director General Rafael Grossi, the right-hand to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, and Peri Lynne Johnson, the agency's senior legal official.Johnson is the only American among the three. While IAEA officials are formally neutral, her citizenship is of potential significance considering the high tension-level between Washington and Tehran.Beyond the dispute over Iran's nuclear intentions, U.S.-Iranian relations have been further burdened by an Iranian announcement that a joint U.S.-Iranian national will be executed after being found guilty of spying - a charge both he and Washington denies.Iran, in turn, sees possible U.S. complicity in a series of assassinations of its nuclear experts - the latest Wednesday, when scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was killed by a bomb attached to his car by a passing bicyclist.In a letter to the U.N. secretary-general on Thursday, Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee called on the U.N. to condemn the killing and two earlier attacks that left two nuclear scientists dead and another seriously injured."There is firm evidence that certain foreign quarters are behind such assassinations. As has been claimed by these circles, such terrorist acts have been carried out as part of the efforts to disrupt Iran's peaceful nuclear program, under the false assumption that diplomacy alone would not be enough for that purpose," the letter read in part.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton denied any U.S. role in the slaying and the U.S administration condemned the attacks. Israeli officials, in contrast, have hinted at covert campaigns against Iran without directly admitting involvement.Beyond urging Iranian cooperation with the IAEA probe of the alleged weapons work, the U.S. and its allies are pressuring Iran to halt uranium enrichment, a key element of the nuclear program that dozens of nations suspect is aimed at producing atomic weapons. Uranium enriched to low levels can be used as nuclear fuel, but at higher levels it can be used as material for a nuclear warhead.Iran denies it is trying to make nuclear weapons, saying its program is for peaceful purposes only and is geared toward generating electricity.Those claims were called into question on Monday when the IAEA confirmed Iran had begun increasing its production of uranium enriched to 20 percent. That's a significantly higher concentration than the nation's main stockpile - and can be turned into weapons-grade material more quickly than the lower enriched uranium.Olli Heinonen, Nackaert's predecessor, noted that "if Iran decides to produce weapons-grade uranium from 20 percent enriched uranium, it has already technically undertaken 90 percent of the enrichment effort required.""This does not automatically mean Iran will be able to build a nuclear weapon in one month - building an atomic bomb is a complex endeavor that requires precision engineering capabilities that Iran may lack," wrote Heinonen, in a commentary for Foreign Policy magazine. "But it does mean that the country would be able to 'break out' of its international obligations very quickly should it decide to do so."

U.N. Floats Global ‘Climate Court’ to Enforce Emissions Rules…$$$

United Nations climate envoys have proposed the creation of a global “climate court” that would be responsible for enforcing a sprawling set of rules requiring developed countries to cut emissions while compensating poorer countries in order to pay off a “historical climate debt.”

The proposals are contained in a draft document pieced together for the climate conference in

Durban, South Africa. Representatives at the conference are struggling to come up with a compromise that negotiators from 194 nations can agree on.

But the draft document, one of many floating around the conference, gives a glimpse into the long-term vision some nations hold for the creation of an international legal framework on climate change.

In the bowels of the document is a provision calling for “an international climate court of justice.”

The proposal is meant to “guarantee the compliance of Annex I Parties with all the provisions of this decision.”

Annex I countries are mostly developed countries, covering the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and much of Europe — including countries that are struggling financially such as Greece and Portugal.

The rules of the road the court would presumably enforce are based on the view that these developed countries owe developing countries a “debt” over climate change, and must provide financial aid in addition to taking major steps toward cutting emissions.


In one section, the document calls for developed countries to help poorer countries with “finance, technology and capacity building” so they can “adapt to and mitigate climate change” while helping eliminate poverty. Another section provides that developing countries should receive an amount of money equal to the amount “developed countries spend on defense, security and warfare.”

Yet the document also calls for a guaranteed end to warfare altogether — for the sake of curbing climate change.

One section, noting that “conflict-related activities emit significant greenhouse gas emissions,” calls on all parties to “cease destructive activities” like warfare — and then channel the money that would have been spent on war and other defense projects toward “a common enemy: climate change.”

The document also asserts the “rights of mother earth,” a concept that environmental activists have been pushing for.

The draft report, which strings together proposals from various working groups, quickly raised alarm among climate change skeptics.

Marc Morano, a former aide to U.N. agitator and Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, told FoxNews.com the document shows the climate talks are intended to create more “taxing and regulatory authority.”

“This is the true U.N. agenda unmasked in this draft report,” he said. Morano now runs the ClimateDepot blog, which also reported on the draft document.

However, the idea of a climate court anytime soon — particularly one that the United States and other big carbon emitters would agree to — may be far-fetched. One environmental law expert, professor Jonathan Verschuuren at The Netherlands‘ Tilburg University, wrote in an online column that the court “will certainly not materialize.”

Instead, representatives at the Durban conference reportedly are still trying to figure out how and whether to extend the Kyoto protocol, whose emission requirements expire next year. Some industrial nations want a new agreement that would ask more of developing countries.

According to The Associated Press, the U.S. and India have backed down a bit on their objections, while China continues to put up resistance.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/10/un-floats-global-climate-court-to-enforce-emissions-rules/

Tom Tancredo Tells UN/Foreigners: Keep Out of USA's Elections

By: Tom Tancredo

Gulag Bound

In November 2012 –

• Foreign bureaucrats will appear at your polling station to ensure you adhere to their vision of a ‘fair’ election.
•  Local polling officials who dare to enforce state clean election laws will be subject to lawsuits and arrest.
• Conservative political speech will be deemed hateful and be suppressed.
•  Just enough voter fraud will be allowed to ensure a second term for Barack Hussein Obama.

So they will make their case for action to the UN Human Rights Council – an international government origination so biased that even Hillary Clinton has denounced it.

U.N. Human Rights Council Logo

Council members like Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Mexico and China will review your election laws and judge if you measure up to their idea of democracy.

How can we accomplish any of our goals, like repealing health care rationing, securing the borders and balancing our budget if we can’t even control our own elections?

That’s why we need to send a clear message to the UN – stay out of America’s elections and abandon Barack Obama to the judgment of the American people.

I need you to tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to send that very message to the United Nations – by any means necessary.

Then I need each of you to forward this to three other people who agree that American’s elections should not be run by the United Nations.

Please take the next 60 seconds to help keep America’s elections in the hands of Americans.

Petition:
https://investigateandimpeach.com/?page_id=124

Thank you for all your support.

Sincerely,

Tom Tancredo

Obama: Hey, Let's Impose an International Tax to Combat Climate Change !!!

Evidence abounds of government incompetence in forcing the world's populace to comply with ill-thought out standards for a somehow climate-change-free planet, and the general impotence and corruption of the United Nations is certainly no secret. So, here's a great idea: why not tax internationl travelers to contribute to a global 'green climate fund'? The tax burden would, of course, fall disproportionately on Americans, who do the most international travel, and would not apply to transactions within the debt-crisis-wracked eurozone--but that's okay, us Americans have money to burn, right?

The high priests of global warming are in the second week of their annual United Nations Climate Change Conference. in Durban, South Africa. CFACT (via Beltway Confidential) reports that these far-sighted, completely selfless, enlightened free thinkers [note: extreme sarcasm] are discussing such ideas as "a new tax on every foreign currency transaction in the world" for travel abroad and, "more importantly, every time we import goods, every time we export our fine products (think jobs) we will do so with a climate tax skimming off the top":


CFACT suggests that Obama is open to implementing this tax and similar policies in the absence of a full climate treaty, which would require congressional approval. "We have learned that while many have discounted this conference, knowing that a full climate treaty is difficult to achieve especially with a U.S. Senate that will not vote to ratify," CFACT says. "Obama and his fellow climate travelers are working around the Senate and planning to stick America with the bill."

Huh. Circumventing Congress, constructing barriers to free trade, and discouraging international travel with higher prices--go ahead and pat yourselves on the back, 'cause that sure sounds like 'winning the future' to me! Not.

Via: Town Hall

U.N. Report to Show Evidence of Iran's Nuclear Weapons Program Advancing

The U.N. atomic agency plans to reveal intelligence next week suggesting Iran made computer models of a nuclear warhead and other previously undisclosed details on alleged secret work by Tehran on nuclear arms, diplomats told The Associated Press on Friday.

Other new confidential information the International Atomic Energy Agency plans to share with its 35 board members will include satellite imagery of what the IAEA believes is a large steel container used for nuclear arms-related high explosives tests, the diplomats said.

The agency has previously listed activities it says indicate possible secret nuclear weapons work by Iran, which has been under IAEA perusal for nearly a decade over suspicions that it might be interested in develop such arms.

But the newest compilation of suspected weapons-related work is significant in substance and scope. The diplomats say they will reveal suspicions that have not been previously made public and greatly expand on alleged weapons-related experiments that have been published in previous reports on Iran's nuclear activities.

It also comes as the drumbeat of reports about possible military action against Iran's nuclear facilities intensifies.

Israeli President Shimon Peres said Friday that international community is closer to pursuing a military solution to the standoff over Iran's nuclear program than a diplomatic one. The comments, from a known dove, assumed added significance because they followed unsubstantiated reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was seeking his government's support for a strike against Tehran.

British media have separately cited unnamed British officials as saying London was prepared to offer military support to any U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/11/04/un-report-to-show-evidence-irans-nuclear-weapons-program-advancing/#ixzz1cpTxsnXL

U.N.’s $2 Billion Building Binge: Getting Worse While It Lobbies for $3 Billion More

• 
  United Nations Building in New York City.

With a $2 billion renovation of its New York headquarters building still more than two years from completion, the United Nations is already lobbying member states for some $3 billion or so for additional major building projects in New York City and Geneva.

About $2.4 billion of the total would go for construction of a new office tower in Manhattan to accommodate the world organization’s burgeoning staff. Another $590 million or so would go for yet another mammoth renovation job -- this one of the U.N.’s venerable offices in Geneva, located in the one-time  home of the ill-fated League of Nations.

And those hefty figures, gleaned from documents presented to this year’s General Assembly, are only early estimates -- and when the U.N. is involved, early building estimates are far more likely to go up than down.

The cost estimate for the U.N.’s ongoing headquarters refurbishment in Manhattan, for example, has climbed roughly 225 percent from its initial estimate of $875 million. And the price hikes there are far from over, as the U.N. tweaks and re-tweaks parts of the project.

An end-of-year analysis of the headquarters renovation project by the U.N.’s independent Board of Auditors warned that “the Board cannot provide assurance on the accuracy of the forecast costs to complete the project."

In fact, the auditors foresaw at least another $227 million in cost increases for the current headquarters renovation, and predicted that “this situation is more likely to worsen than improve.”

One reason for the continuing U.N. push for a global building boom is that whatever austerity the rest of the world faces, the world organization expects its headquarters staff to keep growing -- at a steady 1.1 percent rate annually over the two decades ending in 2034, according to a U.N. study.

That would add 3,000 people in New York City alone who will require nearly 1.9 million square feet of additional space -- hence the desire for yet another additional U.N. tower.

Meantime, its badly aging facilities in Geneva -- some of them 70 years old -- must also accommodate more staff, though the U.N. hopes to do more there through re-jigging its antiquated existing spaces.

Whether the U.N. will get the money it says it needs to accommodate the ongoing bureaucratic bulge is another matter entirely.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/11/03/gift-that-keeps-on-giving-un-lobbying-for-3b-in-future-projects-while/#ixzz1cgGuLxSq

Netanyahu Slams U.N. As 'Theater of the Absurd'

Certainly the theater of the irrelevant !!!

U.S Diplomats Walkout on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad causes a mass walkout of diplomats at the UN after he attacks Western powers over the Holocaust and 9/11.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday denounced the United States and its European allies from the U.N. General Assembly podium as arms-wielding colonialist oppressors who were wrecking the world economy, prompting a walkout by dozens of diplomats.

Ahmadinejad, speaking in an annual appearance at the opening of the General Assembly's new session, described the United States and its allies as the sources of misery going back centuries. He said they were responsible for suffering resulting from slavery, world wars, atomic attacks and the current economic breakdown.

These “slave masters and colonial masters have caused widespread misery and disorder,” Ahmadinejad said, adding: “Do they have the competence to run the world?”

The remarks prompted the departure of diplomats from the United States, European countries and some other nations. Others, including Canadian diplomats, had decided not to show up at all for the Iranian’s speech, which was one of a series of speeches by world leaders to the body.

Israel PM departs for UN, says does not expect 'warm welcome'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday at a Likud party conference that he is aware he will come under heavy pressure as he prepared to leave for New York.

"Tonight I am going to New York to speak at the General Assembly, meet with U.S. President Barack Obama and with other leaders," Netanyahu said. "I know the reception I received here is much warmer than the one I will receive at the UN, and exactly because of that I think we should go there and present our truth… of a people attacked over and over by those opposed to their very existence. That is the most basic truth."

Read More: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-pm-departs-for-un-says-does-not-expect-warm-welcome-1.385633

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend the annual UN General Assembly meeting in New York on Sept 19.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will leave the Iranian capital of Tehran on September 19 to attend the annual UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

The Iranian chief executive, who is due to head a high-ranking political and economic delegation, will leave Tehran on Monday.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, presidential advisor Mojtaba Samareh-Hashemi, Commerce Minister Mahdi Ghazanfari and Head of Iran's Physical Education Organization Ali Saeedlou are among officials accompanying the president on his trip.

President Ahmadinejad will present the political delegations attending the UN meeting with a five-volume book series which include documents on the occupation of Iran during the Second World War.

Following his trip to the US, the Iranian president will pay a visit to Venezuela, Sudan and Mauritania to hold talks with his counterparts.