>>120040https://www.ia-forum.org/Content/ViewInternal_Document.cfm?contenttype_id=0&ContentID=9100"I have an idea, America. You should take your Covid relief checks from the UN honeypot in the US budget, so that the American people and American businesses can survive. There are certain honeypots in the US budget such as the UN and UNICEF that go into black holes on the basis of institutional inertia. It is time to revisit these funding channels that have been taken for granted. The United States contributes roughly $10billion to the UN annually. That is a lot of money that could be used by Americans instead, especially now, allowing over 16 million people to get a $600 check each. Every year, Congress also passes the UNICEF appropriations. For the past years, they have amounted to $132million annually.
Americans should claim their money back. This is your money. You can take your Covid relief checks from the UN and UNICEF honeypots if your money goes to fund crimes against UN whistleblowers, Trump critics and human rights defenders. The UN and UNICEF do not need your funds if they anyways get their funding from questionable corporate sources Republican-style, and from Arab dictators’ royal families and circles.
Trump had a problem with pork in the stimulus package, and particularly the clauses that would fund the Smithsonian and the National Gallery. But they need the money to survive. Americans can’t allow these institutions to slip away. The difference with the UN is that the Smithsonian and the National Gallery are as much of a Washington symbol as the Washington Monument. They signify and commemorate the American spirit and progress. The UN and UNICEF don’t.
UNICEF’s chief and Trump political appointee Henrietta Fore’s leadership style at the UN aligns with the corporate funding Republican style. Roughly, one third of UNICEF’s budget comes from private or corporate donations – more than any other UN agency. I know that because I was one of the analysts in the UNICEF corporate screening team who very quickly saw what the corporate analysis really looks like behind closed doors, and what is really behind the happy faces of multi-race children as UNICEF’s fake public front.
UNICEF performs a very intellectually dishonest analysis in corporate screening, trying to find sophisticated excuses to justify why corporations and individuals with despicable records can engage with UNICEF. Analysts who do not wish to bend the analysis through that prism, are told they have issues with “the quality of the research”. When I first introduced myself at UNICEF and mentioned my human rights background, I got surprised and shocked looks written on the faces of the corporate team colleagues. Now both you and I know why.
On the occasion of clearing for UNICEF engagement a company involved in a scandal with chemical weapons in Syria, one of the supervisors in the UNICEF corporate screening team, Lisa Kleinhenz, said that we should develop “a thick skin”. “Aren’t we all war criminals and terrorists, in some way?” Kleinhenz laughed ugly and haughtily in her usual hubris and sarcasm, typical for the self-empowered and self-important, yet intellectually and morally inferior UN office inhabitants. The episode underscored the UNICEF thinking that there should always be a way to trivialize violations if only we thought hard enough about “the nuances”, so that the organization can get the money."