Pity the poor United Nations. Or not. The international org on Turtle Bay that gives equal say to bastions of freedom like North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela as America has reportedly nearly exhausted its financial reserves.
If nothing changed, the UN will apparently run out of money by the end of this month. Someone pass me some tissues because I’m crying my eyes out.
The United Nations is running a deficit of $230 million, Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Monday, and may run out of money by the end of October. In a letter intended for the 37,000 employees at the UN secretariat and obtained by CBS News’ Pamela Falk, Guterres said unspecified “additional stop-gap measures” would have to be taken to ensure salaries and entitlements are paid.
“Member States have paid only 70 percent of the total amount needed for our regular budget operations in 2019. This translates into a cash shortage of $230 million at the end of September. We run the risk of depleting our backup liquidity reserves by the end of the month,” he wrote.
To cut costs, Guterres mentioned postponing conferences and meetings and reducing services, while also restricting official travel to only essential activities and taking measures to save energy.
Recall that President Donald Trump slashed America’s donation to the UN by $285 million after a majority of the world’s nation states voted against US recognizing Israel’s capital of Jerusalem. From Newsweek:
The U.S. was cheering a massive $285-million cut in the United Nations’ 2018 budget on Sunday—an announcement that comes days after more than 120 nations criticized the United States for its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
In announcing the cut, Ambassador Nikki Haley blamed the world body for its budgetary excesses without making a specific reference to last week’s vote on President Donald Trump’s controversial Jerusalem decision. It is unclear if all of the budget savings will come from a reduction in the U.S. contribution to the U.N.’s overall $5.4-billion biennial budget, but Haley’s statement did not mention any other member states.
Yes, the UN’s shortfall this year would have been made up by what the United States used to donate. But not any more thanks to President Trump. Not to mention that a third of the UN’s deadbeat members haven’t paid their dues at all.
Yes, the gun grabbers at the UN Headquarters might actually face layoff or termination. Why they might even have to return to their tyrannical home nations. Oh noes!
Here’s what they’ve been up to. From GunPolicy.org:
Armed Violence, Small Arms and the United Nations
The United Nations Charter commits nations to maintain international peace and security, and to collectively prevent and remove threats to peace.
Which over the years has been perverted to allow nations to include suppressing uprisings by unarmed populations against socialist and communist tyrannies.
To limit the proliferation of illicit firearms, the nearly-200 Member States of the United Nations have agreed to implement a range of measures to ‘prevent, combat and eradicate’ the harmful effects of small arms and light weapons around the world. These include the UN Firearms Protocol, the UN small arms Programme of Action, the UN Register of Conventional Weapons and the UN Arms Trade Treaty.
Because suppressing the trade of small arms will help prevent armed insurrection against tyranny.
The NRA-ILA has been watching over the UN’s gun-grabbing tendencies as well. From NRA-ILA:
NRA has been engaged at the United Nations and elsewhere internationally in response to overreaching small arms initiatives for two decades. During this time, we have been actively opposing transnational efforts that would limit Americans’ Second Amendment freedoms. NRA has been a recognized Non-Governmental Organization at the United Nations since 1996. Our status as an NGO allows us to closely monitor the internal UN debate over firearm issues and report back to our members.
The most pressing international threat to U.S. gun owners is the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Among its most egregious provisions, the treaty encourages national recordkeeping requirements for “end users” of covered arms (including firearms), and suggests that national governments share such records. Further, the ATT compels countries to make arms import and export decisions based upon a trading partner’s willingness to abide by the treaty’s requirements, which could isolate the United States from legitimate trade in arms or force it to adopt restrictions detrimental to Second Amendment rights. During the drafting phase, NRA vigorously advocated for civilian firearm ownership be removed from the treaty’s scope. Those recommendations were ignored, meaning U.S. firearms policy could become the rest of the world’s business and subject to its approval, on pain of trade restrictions if it doesn’t meet “international norms.”
Secretary of State John Kerry signed the ATT on behalf of the U.S. on September 25, 2013. NRA continues to work with its Senate allies to prevent ratification or implementation of the treaty in the U.S.
Sadly, a majority of nations across the globe don’t share the freedoms Americans do…including the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
The fact that these overwhelmingly gun-hating bureaucrats in New York at UN Headquarters are nearly broke is news we should all celebrate.
In the meantime, maybe they could sell the twisted sculpture pictured at the top of page for scrap metal to pay for their plane rides back home.