6 | OCTOBER 14 • 2021 

1942 - 2021

Covering and Connecting 
Jewish Detroit Every Week

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O

ver recent days, 
foreign leaders, 
rulers and tyrants 
flocked to New York City 
for the 76th Session of 
the United 
Nations General 
Assembly, 
also known as 
UNGA. Did you 
listen to their 
speeches? 
 I thought not. 
So, it occurred 
to me that I should provide 
you with the highlights. 
Only I couldn’t find any. 
So instead, I will treat you 
to some lowlights — lies, 
evasions, boilerplate and 
insults to your intelligence.

Start with Xi Jinping, 
president of the People’s 
Republic of China, who 
pledged “to fight COVID-19 
in solidarity” and “always 
put people and their lives 
first and care about the life 
value and dignity of every 
individual.”
Those nodding and/
or applauding must know 
that Xi has blocked serious 
investigations into the 
origin and spread of the 
virus because such inquiries 
would build on the abundant 
evidence that Beijing, through 
incompetence or worse, let 
loose the global pandemic 
that has killed millions 
of people and devastated 

economies around the globe.
Xi’s propagandists have 
attempted to convince the 
credulous that the altered 
virus came from somewhere 
else — like, hey, maybe 
America! Or Australia! 
Nevertheless, Xi wants 
you to know he “stands 
firmly opposed to political 
maneuvering in whatever 
form.”
Let’s move on to Sergey 
Lavrov, foreign minister 
of Russia, which has sliced 
territory from neighboring 
Georgia and Ukraine while 
helping Syrian dictator 
Bashar al-Assad slaughter 
hundreds of thousands of his 
subjects. He assured us that 

“threats and challenges can 
be countered effectively only 
through concerted efforts in 
strict compliance with the 
universally recognized norms 
of the international law, 
first and foremost, the goals 
and principles of the U.N. 
Charter.”
It’s widely believed that the 
Kremlin has used chemical 
weapons to eliminate critics. 
Lavrov’s solution: “We 
are awaiting a response to 
the Russian initiative to 
elaborate a Convention for 
the Suppression of Acts of 
Chemical and Biological 
Terrorism.”
He’s dismayed, also, that 
“a number of countries” are 

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay
A Litany of Lowlights from the 
U.N. General Assembly Session

Clifford D. 
May
JNS.org

