It’s Past Time to Move the United Nations to Switzerland

Wayne MADSEN

With a dangerous right-wing and quasi-fascist administration in power in Washington, one that rejects internationalism and consensus-building, it is past time for the United Nations to move its headquarters and member states’ permanent missions to a more neutral location. One can understand why the UN was originally located in New York. The Rockefeller family donated the land on Turtle Bay on the East River for the construction of UN Headquarters. After World War II, the United States was in a prime position to nurture the UN, something it failed to do after World War I when Washington rejected membership in the League of Nations.

The League’s headquarters in Geneva was a painful reminder to some UN members who saw the world’s first international organization devoted to peacemaking fail miserably to contain Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. In some respects, although the UN was the successor organization to the League, no one wanted to be reminded that it was at the League’s headquarters in Switzerland where Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie pleaded with delegates to stop the brutal Italian invasion and occupation of his country.

The charter members of the UN wanted no reminders of the UN’s toothless predecessor. The UN was an organization with a Security Council of five permanent members that was authorized to meet aggression with force. Unfortunately, the UN’s host nation, particularly under Donald Trump, but also to a lesser extend under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, has shown its willingness to disregard decisions of the UN and violate the US-UN Treaty governing the rights of delegates to freely enter and depart New York while conducting business at the UN.

The US-UN treaty, which may not be violated by Trump without the approval of Congress, was signed at Lake Success, New York in 1947. The signatories were UN Secretary General Trygve Lie and US Secretary of State George Marshall. The treaty guaranteed the extraterritorial nature of the UN headquarters in Manhattan. Furthermore, it guaranteed that the US would not interfere with the expeditious granting of US visas to foreign diplomats and UN personnel transiting through US territory in furtherance of their responsibilities to their own governments and the UN, respectively.

Trump’s xenophobic and far-right policies directed against Muslims, Palestinians, and countries, including Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, and Venezuela, have resulted in repeated violations of the US-UN Treaty by zealous US immigration authorities. The recent Trump administration threat to deny visas to Iran’s delegation to attend the 2019 General Assembly Plenary Session in New York is a case in point, but not the only one. Similar restrictions by the Trump administration have been levied against delegates from UN members Libya, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Official observers from Palestine have also been harassed and delegates from the Houthi-led government of Yemen and Abkhazia, non-UN members, have been denied US visas to plead their cases before the UN.

The US-UN Treaty stipulates that the US government will facilitate entrance into the United States, and the use of available means of transportation, of “persons coming from abroad who wish to visit the headquarters.” This would include members of non-member nations wishing to petition or otherwise interact with the UN and affiliate agencies on an official basis. In fact, the US violated this provision in 1975 when US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger saw to it that US visas were denied to representatives of the Kingdom of Sikkim, Western Sahara, and East Timor, who desired to plead their nations’ cases with regard to invasions and occupations by India, Morocco, and Indonesia, respectively. East Timor was eventually admitted to the UN as a member state, but it was after a bloody war with Indonesian occupation forces and US collusion with Indonesia’s military dictatorship.

US policy toward a liberalized visa policy for UN members, employees, observers, and guests has been erratic since the UN’s founding. In 1968, the Lyndon Johnson administration did grant a visa to Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of the secessionist Republic of Biafra Matthew Mbu to visit the UN to plead his nation’s case to UN officials. In 1948, the Harry Truman administration denied visas for two representatives of Indian princely state leaders – the Muslim Nizam of Hyderabad and the Sikh Maharajah of Nabha – to appeal to the UN against aggression by the Hindu-dominated newly-independent nation of India. That same year, the Truman administration failed to permit representatives of the Kalat Confederacy in Baluchistan to appeal to the UN against Pakistani annexation.

The original founders of the UN even envisaged a UN-controlled airport near the UN Headquarters that would deny US immigration authorities the right to deny visas to UN delegates and other guests visiting the UN. Such an airport would have enjoyed extraterritorial status with unhindered travel corridors to and from the UN.

While he was Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, was subjected to an invasive strip search in 2006 when he was detained for 90 minutes at New York’s JFK Airport while returning home from a UN General Assembly meeting. The detention of Maduro was a CIA-initiated fishing expedition. Maduro was questioned about his alleged role in the failed 1992 Venezuelan coup attempt led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Although the League of Nations lacked any real enforcement authority to back up its resolutions, the host nation of Switzerland did yeoman’s work in facilitating the entry to the Geneva headquarters by official parties and guests. The US record on affording equal access to the UN in New York has been woefully inadequate. The UN could very easily move its headquarters to Geneva, where several UN constituent bodies and specialized agencies, including the UN Human Rights Council, World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), World Meteorological Organization (which is immune to Donald Trump’s redrawing of weather maps with black Sharpie pens), and the International Telecommunications Union are located.

Since Switzerland’s traditional foreign policy is one of neutrality, it is a much better choice to host the UN than New York. Trump’s recently fired National Security Adviser, John Bolton, who was also a past US ambassador to the UN, once fantasized about the top ten floors of the UN Secretariat building being demolished. Trump’s personal attorney, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, routinely used the New York Police Department to harass UN delegates from countries he did not like. Delegates and staff from Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Laos, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, Kazakhstan, China, Cuba, Cyprus, Zaire, and other countries were routinely issued parking tickets and had their vehicles towed. Russian diplomat Alexandre Zmeevski stated that “his delegation had been given tickets even in some parking spaces reserved for diplomatic vehicles.” Costa Rica delegate Emilia Castro de Barish complained that she “had received two unfair and discriminatory parking citations, including a citation while she had been parked in a parking space reserved for diplomats.” In 1995, Giuliani ordered Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, in the city to help celebrate the UN’s 50th anniversary, ejected from a New York Philharmonic special concert for the gathered world leaders. Giuliani stated that if the UN did not like his harassment of its employees and diplomats, they could “leave town.”

It was not the first time that a right-wing Republican and extremist Israel supporter told the UN to leave New York. Alternate US delegate Charles Lichtenstein addressed a diplomatic standoff with the Soviet Union in 1983, when the states of New York and New Jersey barred Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko’s plane from landing at either JFK Airport in New York or Newark International Airport in New Jersey. The alternative of McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey was offered. However, the Soviet government rejected the offer as a violation of US treaty rights afforded to the UN. Lichtenstein responded by saying that if member states believed that “they are not being treated with the hostly consideration that is their due, they should consider removing themselves and this organization from the soil of the United States,” adding, “we will put no impediment in your way. The members of the US mission to the United Nations will be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset.”

It’s time to honor the requests of Giuliani and Lichtenstein and move the UN from New York to Geneva or another location not subject to the whims of right-wing fanatic blowhards like Trump, Giuliani, Bolton, or the late Mr. Lichtenstein.

Wayne MADSEN

Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club

Khashoggi versus 50,000 Slaughtered Yemeni Children

by Peter Koenig 

The European Parliament has asked yesterday (25 October) for an immediate embargo on the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, hence sanctioning the Kingdom of rogue Saudi Arabia which is joining the United States and Israel as the main purveyor of crime throughout the Middle East and the world. France still said they will apply sanctions only if it is proven that Riyadh was indeed involved in the killing of the controversial Saudi journalist. Madame Merkel at least days ago said that Germany would no longer supply the Saudis with arms – as a result of the heinous crime committed on Jamal Khashoggi.

No doubt, it was a horrible murder that took place in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, with Jamal Khashoggi’s body possibly sawed to pieces, and according to latest accounts, buried in the Consulate’s backyard. And all that now admitted, executed by order of Riyadh. To soften the blow, for business purposes, some European countries would like to argue that it may not have been a premeditated assassination, but possibly a mortal “accident”, which would of course change the premises and lessen the punishment – and weapon sales could continue. It’s all business anyway.

Europe has no morals, no ethics no nothing. Europe, represented by Brussels, and in Brussels by the non-elected European Commission (EC), for all practical purposes is a mere nest of worms, or translated into humans, a nest of white-collar criminals, politicians, business people and largely a brainwashed populace of nearly 500 million. There are some exceptions within the population and fortunately their pool of ‘awakened’ is gently growing.

Even Switzerland, a neutral country according to her Constitution, not a member of the EU, but a staunch adherent to the (non-) European Union through more than 110 bi-and multilateral contracts, it was revealed yesterday, is assisting in Saudi Arabia converting the Swiss built (civilian) Pilatus helicopter into a ferocious war machine. Pilatus has always had that reputation of its controversial convertibility and was particularly known within Switzerland for that reason – but now, they surpass the limit of the tolerable, by helping the criminal and warmonger Saudis to mount a flying war machine in their, the Saudi’s, country – totally against Swiss law and against the Swiss Constitution, but fully tolerated by the Swiss Government.

Back to the real issue: It took the horrendous murder of a famous Saudi-critical and Saudi-national journalist, for the Europeans to react – and that, mind you, grudgingly. They’d rather follow Donald Trump’s line, why lose 110 billion dollars-worth of arms sales to the Saudis, for the murder of a journalist. – After all, business is business. Everything else is a farce.

For three and half years, the Saudi’s have waged a horrendous war on Yemen. They have slaughtered tens of thousands of Yemenis – according to the UN Human Rights Commission more than 50,000 children died by Saudi air raids with UK supplied bombs, and US supplied war planes – through lack of sanitation and drinking water induced diseases, like cholera – and an even worse crime, through extreme famine, the worst famine in recent history – as per UNICEF / WHO – imposed by force, as the Saudi’s with the consent of the European allies closed down all ports of entry, including the moist important Red Sea Port of Hodeida.

The European, along with the US, have been more than complicit in this crime against humanity – in these horrendous war crimes. Imagine one day a Nuremberg-type Court against war crimes committed in the last 70 years, not one of the western leaders, still alive, would be spared. That’s what we – in the west – have become. A nest of war criminals – war criminals for sheer greed. They invented a neoliberal, everything goes market doctrine system, where no rules no ethics no morals count – just money, profit and more profit. Any method of maximizing profit – war and war industry – is good and accepted. And the  west with its fiat money made of hot air, is imposing this nefarious, destructive system everywhere, by force and regime change if voluntary acceptance is not in the cards.

And we, the people, have become complicit in it, as we are living in luxury and comfort, and couldn’t care less what our leaders (sic-sic) are doing to the rest of the world, to the so-called lesser humans, who live in squalor as refugees, their homes and towns destroyed, bombed to ashes, no schools, no hospitals, and to a large extent no food – yes about 70 million-plus refugees are everyday on the move, most of them from the west-destroyed Middle-East. Why should we worry? We live well. To the contrary, these refugees they could steal our jobs. Let them not invade our luxury havens. Rather keep bombing their countries into rubble.

Yemen, strategically highly sought-for, should, of course, not be governed by the Houthis, a socialist-leaning group of revolutionary Muslims which is part of the Shia Zaidi, a branch of the Shia Imamiya of Iran.They finally became sick and tired of the decades-long Washington manipulation of their government. And who better than the stooges of Saudi Arabia to do the dirty job for Washington? – And, yes, they don’t have to do it alone. Weapon supplies comefrom all over Europe, mainly the UK, and France, also Spain, and for a while also from Germany – and well, neutral Switzerland.

No matter that tens of thousands of children are killed, that according to the Human Rights Commission, up to 22 million Yemenis (out of about 30 million population), are in danger of severe famine, and that includes at least 8 million children – children who have for the most part no more access to schools, health services and food – an entire generation or more without education, a well-planned and premeditated gap in society, as is the case in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. By killing and depriving children of basic needs, the west is creating a widening gap of educated people, of people that can and would otherwise fight for their countries, for their societies. But – they are gone. That makes it so much easier for the west just to take over – their strategic position, their natural resources and suck empty the social safety funds accumulated by their labor force.

Isn’t that a thought for the illustrious populace who live in western luxury, to lean back in their fauteuils and think about? – What if, one day the tables are reversed – and we, the west would face justice? – Is anybody in the west bold and realistic enough to see such a picture? – And as we see these days – history is advancing in giant steps. It’s the 21st Century – Artificial Intelligence (AI) has more than made inroads in our society. And what if – if those that we consider inferior and our enemies, are in fact a few steps ahead of us in AI science – and could reverse the picture rather rapidly?

And while we wonder why Saudi-slaughtered Yemenis does not raise a fuss in the western media, but the Saudi killing of a journalist does, all-the-while our linear IMF provided projections increase western GDP by fantastic numbers by 2030, irrespective of the20% unemployment thanks to AI, that some predict – all these contradictory figures are unimportant, while we can make a killing from killing Yemeni children. But it takes the Khashoggi killing that might stop – if only temporarily, and if only we are lucky – the Saudi war machine. The population of Yemen is unimportant. Why?

Why does it take the assassination of a journalist – granted, a horrendous and grisly murder by his own country’s government – no matter how controversial Jamal Khashoggi was, he has been writing for our western MSM, for the truth tellers, such as the Washington post and the NYTimes. That may have helped making him more important than 50,000 slaughtered and maimed Yemeni children – more important in the sense that only through his abject murder, the European – maybe – will react and ‘sanction’ the Saudis.

But even that is not sure – as the Transatlantic Master Trump, has many trumps up his sleeve, that he may offer or coerce the EU puppets into following his heinous example and spare Riyadh from any punishment, especially as far as weapons are concerned. After all its business. Dead children are just that, dead Yemenis, a generation less to worry about.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organizationaround the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites.