Author Topic: Bolton sabotages UN summit.  (Read 2931 times)

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Offline Rictor

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
As predicted in virtually every newspaper on the planet, UN ambassador by appointment John Bolton has basically taken a long piss on the historic UN World Summit, which was supposed to introduce far-reaching reforms.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4243580.stm

Quote
The draft hammered out after weeks of bitter wrangling pledges to honour anti-poverty goals, but other points are diluted or omitted entirely.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters the draft document had two important omissions - non-proliferation and disarmament

"This is a real disgrace," he said, adding that he hoped world leaders would take up the issues up at the summit.

Brazil's UN ambassador, Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg, said the compromise package contained little that was new.

The BBC's diplomatic correspondent, Bridget Kendall, says the reforms now agreed upon are a far cry from what Mr Annan had been envisaging.


Amazing how a single beaurocrat acting without even the authorization of his own people can scuttle policies which is essentially a consensus among the world's nations. But what is equally amazing is how the UN just sort of sits there and takes it, as opposed to, say locking Bolton in a closet until the summit is over. Seriously, how can the world allow itself to intimidated by such a sorry excuse for a human being? I would have paid someone like Belize $50 to throw a punch, at least it would be something.
« Last Edit: September 13, 2005, 10:02:03 pm by 644 »

 

Offline Liberator

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
*imagines that Bolton could solve world hunger and establish balanced, working republics in every country on Earth and he'd still be panned*
So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

There are only 10 types of people in the world , those that understand binary and those that don't.

 

Offline Rictor

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Excuse me? He took every good thing in the proposal, such as the Millenium Goals for reducing poverty, nuclear disarmament, action against global warming, endorsement for the ICC, endorsement of the test ban treaty and either removed it or watered it down to such a level that it's as good as dead.

Point to one positive contribution by Bolton? Believe it or not, the entire freaking world wants to eliminate poverty and nuclear weapons and protect the environment, but along comes Bolton who manages to over rule world opinion with his own. I ask you, is that justice?

 

Offline mikhael

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
He has the authorization "of his own people". His nomination went through. Its a republic. The people's representatives approved him.

Sure the guy's a dick, but at least get your facts straight.
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Offline Ford Prefect

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
The US government was close, but not quite on the money. Who we really need for the UN is Michael Bolton.

"Mais est-ce qu'il ne vient jamais à l'idée de ces gens-là que je peux être 'artificiel' par nature?"  --Maurice Ravel

 

Offline mikhael

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Quote
Originally posted by Liberator
*imagines that Bolton could solve world hunger and establish balanced, working republics in every country on Earth and he'd still be panned*


Of course, that presumes he COULD.

Rictor's right in this case, albeit wrong on the "authorization" thing. Non-proliferation and disarmament are painfully important.
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Offline Rictor

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Quote
Originally posted by mikhael
He has the authorization "of his own people". His nomination went through. Its a republic. The people's representatives approved him.

Sure the guy's a dick, but at least get your facts straight.


Technically, yes. But we all know it's not as good as the real thing. When you are forced to resort to appointment, democracy is not in good shape. It's just semantics.

 

Offline IceFire

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Quote
Originally posted by Liberator
*imagines that Bolton could solve world hunger and establish balanced, working republics in every country on Earth and he'd still be panned*

I can't see that ever happening...

Establishing balanced working republics everywhere, in the face of years of luxury and destitution, power and oppression.

Own up to it.  The choice made for the Ambassador to the UN was a controversial and ultimately, as is seen, crippling.  I'm fairly certain the present U.S. Administration wants to see the U.N.'s role challenged so much that they are essentially tossed aside.  It sure would make declaring war on another country easier...
- IceFire
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"Burn the land, boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me..."

 

Offline mikhael

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Quote
Originally posted by Rictor


Technically, yes. But we all know it's not as good as the real thing. When you are forced to resort to appointment, democracy is not in good shape. It's just semantics.


Last I checked, all ambassadors are appointed.

And this isn't a democracy.

NOT A DEMOCRACY.

NOT A DEMOCRACY.

NOT A DEMOCRACY.

Its a REPUBLIC.

Christ.
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Offline Rictor

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Alright, jeez. Temper.

(and I meant appointment without oversight. I can see the arguement that many nations directly appoint ambassadors without consulting the legislature, but if the US wanted to do it that way they (as in those who established the laws, I don't know if it was the founding fathers in this case or someone later) shouldn't have required confirmation hearings as part of the process.)

 

Offline Mefustae

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Is it just me, or has the US become a Neo-Soviet Union, willing to screw over everyone else in the world to get ahead, the  consequences be damned...:doubt:

 

Offline aldo_14

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Quote
Originally posted by Liberator
*imagines that Bolton could solve world hunger and establish balanced, working republics in every country on Earth and he'd still be panned*


I'd rather have fully working democracies, but maybe that's just me.  Of course, technically I could do that.  The operative word being 'could', as in when hell freezes over (actually, I'd probably be more likely to achieve it by then than Dr Robotnik here)

Bolton is doing his job perfectly; to weaken the UN and by doing so factionalize the world into easily dominateable small groups of nations.  Didn't the Bush administration publicly call for UN reform?  And yet their chosen - ramroded home - representative has done everything in his power to weaken and prevent reform; tabling over 500 amendment just months before the bill was due to be approved, and 12+ after it was formed.

No mention of improving the UN High Comission on Human Rights, no measures for anti-nuclear proliferation (and those on normal weapons watered down), no definition of terrorism and no requirement to protect against it (this was changed to a duty to only protect the countries own citizens - but against their own abstract definition of terrorism)- why is America so resistant to these?  Especially the latter - are they scared that they might be less able to discredit and ignore the UN?

(thing I found; http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_3026891)

[q]If we set out to create a farm in the wilderness, we should not expect the top local predators to help. We have our interests, and they have theirs: As our little patch of order spreads, their ability to hunt freely and dominate the local environment will be increasingly constrained. So we should not be surprised that John Bolton is trying to sabotage the reform of the United Nations.

    The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., recently appointed by President Bush in defiance of Congress' wishes, believes that if the United Nations is not an instrument of American power, then it is an obstacle to the free exercise of American power. There is no point in getting angry about that. He and his neo-conservative colleagues are deeply traditional men and women who see world politics as a zero-sum game in which there are only winners and losers, and they believe that America's best chance of remaining a winner is to preserve the world as a free-fire zone for the exercise of U.S. military and economic power.

    That is why Bolton, at the last moment, entered more than 400 objections to the draft agreement on the changes that are needed to make the U.N. relevant to the challenges of the 21st century. About 175 heads of state and heads of government will be in New York by today for a three-day session to mark the U.N.'s 60th anniversary and approve the landmark document that has been under negotiation for the past year, but the last-minute U.S. intervention has reopened many issues that were all but settled and it is doubtful that there will even be a final document by Friday.

    This is not necessarily a deliberate American stratagem. The Senate's refusal to confirm Bolton as ambassador to the U.N. distracted the White House from the actual negotiations under way at the U.N., and in any case the Bush administration has always been sloppy and offhand about the nitty-gritty of detail work. For example, U.S. negotiators at the U.N. originally proposed that only democratic countries should be eligible for membership on the new Human Rights Council that is to replace the old and discredited Human Rights Commission.

    Fair enough: It made no sense that oppressive countries like Sudan and Libya which abuse human rights themselves should sit in judgment on others. But how do you define "democratic countries"? American negotiators suggested that they could be defined simply as those countries that have signed the major international treaties on human rights - and then hastily withdrew their suggestion when they realized that that would disqualify the United States itself from membership.

    Such difficulties can be resolved by creative diplomacy. You just require that countries be elected to the Human Right Commission by a two-thirds majority in the U.N. General Assembly, which allows even a minority of fully democratic countries to block any undesirable candidate without the need to define "democratic." But what Bolton dropped into the laps of the negotiators, only three weeks before the U.N. summit opened, was quite different. He effectively demanded that the draft be torn up and rewritten to suit U.S. tastes.

   Bolton demanded that all references to climate change be removed, and likewise all references to wealthy countries like the United States committing to a goal of 0.7 percent of their gross national product in foreign aid. There was to be no special help for developing countries to join the World Trade Organization, and no commitment by nuclear-weapons countries to work for nuclear disarmament. There should be no reference to the International Criminal Court (which the United States is trying to destroy), and no reference either to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals on poverty, education, disease, trade and aid.

    Passages promising a larger role for the General Assembly were to be struck out, as was the promise to create a standing military capacity for U.N. peacekeeping. Gone was the reaffirmation that "the use of force should be considered as an instrument of last resort," the promise to "encourage pharmaceutical companies to make anti-retroviral drugs affordable and accessible in Africa," and any legal responsibility for the Security Council to authorize intervention to stop genocides and ethnic cleansing. Bolton even wanted to remove the phrase "respect for nature" from the section on values and principles.

    Since the core project of expanding the Security Council has already been postponed for several months in the face of apparently irreconcilable ideas about how to do it (and may actually be postponed for years), Bolton's demands pretty much pulled the rug out from under the whole U.N. reform project. In three weeks of hectic negotiations, his only significant retreat has been to permit a reference to the Millennium Development Goals. So the choice effectively becomes to let the Bush administration gut the reform process - or to let it fail for now.

    The option of pressing ahead without American participation, as was done with the Kyoto accord on global warming, the International Criminal Court and a number of other recent international initiatives, does not exist in this case, for the United States is a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council and also contributes a quarter of the U.N.'s budget. But the current U.S. administration and its extreme world view do not represent the views of all Americans - the United States was, after all, the original moving spirit behind the principles of the United Nations - and President Bush will not be in power forever.

   "There is no such thing as the United Nations," Bolton once said. "There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States." That sums up the neo-conservatives' view of the world, but their political power is waning as their Iraq adventure collapses and their inability to cope even with domestic disasters becomes plain. Rather than agree to an inadequate document now and foreclose the possibility of further reform for many years to come, it would be better to let the current attempt fail and try again in three years' time. [/q]
« Last Edit: September 14, 2005, 04:13:40 am by 181 »

 

Offline Martinus

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
[color=66ff00]This my friends is the legacy of greed.

The more you have the less willing you are to share.
[/color]

 

Offline Mefustae

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Humanity's great isn't it!

 

Offline vyper

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
The United Nations was set up to protect the weakest from the strongest, the poorest from the richest. Today, in an era that only vaguely remembers the the days of Churchill, Stalin, Hitler and Roosevelt, no one truly understands why the UN is such an important organisation and why it's weakening is a worrying step on the road to a return to Total War*.

We can respect Bolton if he honestly believes the UN is a problem to be overcome for his own nation, but we cannot sit idly by while he and his government tear down what little credibility the UN has left. Yes, this is a time for change. That change however should be to strengthen the UN and to define a more unified military power that can enforce Security Council resolutions - be they in Zimbabwe or Palestine, Afghanistan or South America.  Britain should be at the forefront of this case for true change.

Her Majestys government has pledged to support the United Nations and to uphold the ideals we signed up for all those decades ago. Not only that but we have a history of global enrichment and improvement of the quality of living - contrary to the politically correct view, the Empire laid the foundation for the democracy that exists today in India, the public infrastructure and transport system. Countless near-east nations also benefited in such ways. Why, then, do we find Tony Blair supporting President Bush in his attempts to circumvent the UN? Perhaps because the PM has to appear strongly against foreign (read: European) influence on his government at a time when the EU is gaining unpopular levels of power, yet in a way that he cannot openly oppose.


*Look it up if you don't get the reference
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Offline aldo_14

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
you're blaming the EU for this? :wtf:

 

Offline vyper

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Did you read what I posted? I'm not blaming any one group. I am pointing out the reason why Blair is so eager to jump on the anti-UN band wagon as it's a way to deflect criticisms over his engagement with the EU.

Which might I add was merely a footnote to my main point.
"But you live, you learn.  Unless you die.  Then you're ****ed." - aldo14

 

Offline vyper

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Additionally: 3-2, 3-2, 3-2!
"But you live, you learn.  Unless you die.  Then you're ****ed." - aldo14

 

Offline aldo_14

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
Quote
Originally posted by vyper
Did you read what I posted? I'm not blaming any one group. I am pointing out the reason why Blair is so eager to jump on the anti-UN band wagon as it's a way to deflect criticisms over his engagement with the EU.

Which might I add was merely a footnote to my main point.


So it's really the people launching into the EU in the 'we fought a war 50 years ago against this' type bandwagon who are to blame for kow-towing to the Americans?

Oh, and :D indeed
« Last Edit: September 14, 2005, 08:34:40 am by 181 »

 

Offline Martinus

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Bolton sabotages UN summit.
[color=66ff00]:lol: fibble fans.
[/color]