Wednesday, May 31, 2017

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley To Visit Israel After Showdown With Anti-Israel Group In Geneva




Nikki Haley to Visit Israel After Showdown with Anti-Israel U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva



"U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley announced Tuesday that she will travel to Israel after first addressing the notoriously anti-Israel Human Rights Council in Geneva – a body which the U.S. boycotted in March...

But the visit to Israel, taking place June 7-9 will be preceded by a visit to the controversial U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 6 – the first address to the Council by a U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N.

Later that day, Haley will give a speech at the Graduate Institute in Geneva where she will 'lay out the U.S. position on future involvement' in the Council and address 'the benefits and the failings of the Council with respect to the vital mission of defending millions of people against the world's worst cases of human rights abuse.'


The U.S. boycotted the opening session of the Council in March over its explicitly anti-Israel agenda. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that one particular agenda item – 'Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories' – was 'yet another reminder of that body's long-standing bias against Israel.'

The Bush administration declined to join the Council when it formed in 2006 as a successor to the Human Rights Commission, which the U.S. had also declined to join. However, the Obama administration applied for membership, claiming it would be easier to reform from the inside. But such reform efforts were scarce..."








Following news reports that President Donald Trump will withdraw the United States from the costly Paris Agreement, FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon commented:
“The Paris Agreement is too costly for the United States. Americans haven’t seen real economic and wage growth for far too long, and this misguided treaty failed to strike anything close to a balanced between preserving the environment and prosperity. The Paris Agreement would have cost the economy more than $2 trillion and nearly 400,000 jobs.”
“We applaud the decision from President Trump and urge his administration to continue to seek ways to roll back costly regulations that are hurting the economy.”
FreedomWorks aims to educate, build, and mobilize the largest network of activists advocating the principles of smaller government, lower taxes, free markets, personal liberty and the rule of law









While it was not surprising that as part of the ongoing probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections, the House Intel Committee issued a total of seven subpoenas on Wednesday as the WSJ reported, what was surprisng is that in addition to four subpoenas focusing purely on the Russia investigation, the Republican-led committee also issued three subpoenas focusing on "unmasking" questions, involving how and why the names of associates of President Donald Trump were unredacted and distributed within classified reports by Obama administration officials during the transition between administrations.
As part of the "unmasking" investigation, in addition to the NSA, the House committee also subpoeaned the FBI and the CIA for information on how and why Trump-linked names were exposed to the entire US intel community, and led to an avalanche of "unnamed sources" stories. 
Recall that typically information about Americans intercepted in foreign surveillance is redacted, even in classified reports distributed within the government, unless a compelling need exists to reveal them. Unmasking requests aren’t uncommon by top intelligence community officials but Republicans want to know whether any of the unmaskings of Trump campaign officials during the transition were politically motivated. 
According to the WSJ, Republicans on the committee have been pushing for a thorough investigation of how the names of Trump campaign officials became exposed in classified intelligence reports based off intelligence community intercepts. Specifically, the three "unmaksing" subpoenas seek information on requests made by former national security adviser Susan Rice, former CIA Director John Brennan and former United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power for names to be unmasked in classified material.



2 comments:

Caver said...

Ambs. Haley is so shy and retiring, am sure these UN folks will find her completely entertaining and sociable. Oh boy, has she turned their make-believe world upside down. Would love to be a fly on the wall for this one.

Scott said...

Yea, how much longer before we start to hear people asking for her "exit" from this role..Surprised we haven't already heard this coming from the MSM