Thread: Bush Accepts Bolton's U.N. Resignation

Originally Posted by Judy

http://abcnews.go.com/International/IraqCoverage/story?id=1692347&page=1

CrocketsGhost .. is this what you're talking about?

The article states that we have no defense against these weapons. The article states that this weapon has been smuggled in since last October 2005. This means we have had our troops in an Islamic State, a form of government we don't even support ideologically in a nation we invaded against the UN on a Lie and a False Premise, getting blown to bits for over a year by a weapon that we have no defense against.

And you blame Iran for this.

No. I am referring to a large cache of RPGs and components for IEDs discovered just a week or two ago which bore Iranian military insignia and late 2006 manufacture dates.

The rest of your post is just more of the same, so I will decline to respond.

Judy, all I have to say is beware of wolves in sheep clothing. This is very similar to what Mexican drug cartels do to gain the support of their poverty stricken citizens. I know that your heart is in the right place, but I can assure you, his is not. People in his own country fear him, and his country is filled with crime and corruption. His dog and pony show does not fool me. He is an evil attention monger that will go to any lengths to destroy the US. This man also spends a great deal of time with Fidel Castro. He certainly isn't our friend. Chavez takes every opportunity that he can to grandstand and make a spectacle of himself. His attack on President Bush at the UN meeting was a disgrace, along with all of the people who supported Chavez that day by applauding. If the world does not like the US, they should stop relying on our generosity and support. We take a lot of granted here and I am sorry to say with the support these radical leaders are getting, I am sure that we won't enjoy it for long.

As for the other leaders that we aren't condeming...our military cannot be spread out to thin. It would be foolish to start a verbal war or worse without being able to back it up.

Originally Posted by Neese

Judy, all I have to say is beware of wolves in sheep clothing. This is very similar to what Mexican drug cartels do to gain the support of their poverty stricken citizens. I know that your heart is in the right place, but I can assure you, his is not. People in his own country fear him, and his country is filled with crime and corruption. His dog and pony show does not fool me. He is an evil attention monger that will go to any lengths to destroy the US. This man also spends a great deal of time with Fidel Castro. He certainly isn't our friend. Chavez takes every opportunity that he can to grandstand and make a spectacle of himself. His attack on President Bush at the UN meeting was a disgrace, along with all of the people who supported Chavez that day by applauding. If the world does not like the US, they should stop relying on our generosity and support. We take a lot of granted here and I am sorry to say with the support these radical leaders are getting, I am sure that we won't enjoy it for long.

Oh trust me, I'm quite an expert now on Wolves in Sheeps Clothing ... watching our own boys at work.

I think it's dangerous to hate the individual leaders of other nations. I think we made that mistake in Iraq. We tend to judge them by our circumstances when theirs are very different and we need to be careful and cautious about that and do our best to treat everyone the same. There isn't anything we really do for Venezuela except buy their oil and products. I understand that the well to do of Venezuela are quite worried because of the taxation and possible eminent domain/nationalization type activities that may take place to better redistribute their resources to deal with this extreme poverty. I read a report several months ago that indicated he had reduced poverty by about 10% in just his first 4 years of office and you know he had our coup of his election to deal with. I'm not a fan of communists or even socialists, but social programs to alleviate suffering and inequities along the lines of what we have are unfortunately necessary.

Pure Capitalism rarely works. It didn't work here and if it doesn't work here, it won't work anywhere else. Ours could work better if we weren't exporting our jobs and importing people who need them.

That's what we're all working towards by stopping illegal immigration and doing something about these gawdawful Free Trade Agreements.

I think it's dangerous to hate the individual leaders of other nations. I think we made that mistake in Iraq. We tend to judge them by our circumstances when theirs are very different and we need to be careful and cautious about that and do our best to treat everyone the same. There isn't anything we really do for Venezuela except buy their oil and products. I understand that the well to do of Venezuela are quite worried because of the taxation and possible eminent domain/nationalization type activities that may take place to better redistribute their resources to deal with this extreme poverty. I read a report several months ago that indicated he had reduced poverty by about 10% in just his first 4 years of office and you know he had our coup of his election to deal with. I'm not a fan of communists or even socialists, but social programs to alleviate suffering and inequities along the lines of what we have are unfortunately necessary.

Judy, I am struggling with your compassion towards people that would not hesistate to blow off my head, or yours for that matter. Their circumstances truly are different than our, and you cannot treat everyone the same. The sad truth is that most of these men, if not all, are sneaky and deceitful. They put up smokescreens to make it look like they are heroes, when in fact they are harming their own people. Please Google this topic, you will find out quickly that Chavez is not the saint that you think he is. The problem with being politically correct in times of war is that we are wasting loads of time and money. The very people complaining that this war is taking too long, are also the people who are dragging it out. We need to wake up, stop being so polite and finish things up in the middle east. I am sick and tired of hearing about terrorists rights at Gitmo...blah, blah, blah. These people do not deserve any rights...they kill for a living, unjustly and without remorse. Everyone needs to stop listening to the Hollywood crowd. They are uneducated, attention seeking whiners who support causes that they know nothing about.

It's not compassion, neese. I don't have compassion for other countries. Mine is only for the United States. I know from negotiations that you can not protect your company, your town, your city, your county, your nation from others without having diplomatic relations; guarding and securing your nation; and minding your own business.

We've done none of these with the very nations that you and others are most concerned about.

Maybe we should try diplomatic relations; guarding and securing our nation against everyone as a matter of normal defense and national security; and mind our own business by staying out of other nation's politics.

That's what the Chinese do. And look how successful they have become while we're bogged down in the Q'oran Quagmire in Iraq.

Well ... we won't settle it here. But what we're presently doing and not doing isn't working so we need a new attitude and new courses of action that may prove better results.

Well ... we won't settle it here. But what we're presently doing and not doing isn't working so we need a new attitude and new courses of action that may prove better results.

With that being said, I'll have to agree with you, we are all on the same team.

Originally Posted by Neese

[quote:btoau8f7]Well ... we won't settle it here. But what we're presently doing and not doing isn't working so we need a new attitude and new courses of action that may prove better results.

With that being said, I'll have to agree with you, we are all on the same team.

[/quote:btoau8f7]

This is the article above that CrocketsGhost was referring to as the reason he believes the UN has destroyed our rights.

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United Nations Declaration of Human Rights Destroys Individual Rights
by Glenn Woiceshyn (December 11, 199

On December 10th the United Nations celebrated the 50th anniversary of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a five-page, 30-article document specifying everyone's alleged rights. Rather than celebrate it, we should condemn it as a destroyer of rights and a charter of tyranny.

The concept of rights is older than the United Nations but relatively new in human history -- a predominantly savage and bloody history of war, murder, slavery, rape and looting committed by humans against humans. Such is "life" when people regard each other as sacrificial fodder for their needs, desires or superstitions.

Throughout history, governments formed to protect people from domestic criminals and foreign invaders, but people also needed protection from their own government. The greatest crimes in history were committed by governments against their own people, specifically governments that were above the law. In the 20th century alone, scores of millions were slaughtered by communist and fascist (both collectivist) governments which regarded their citizens as means to their ends.

The 18th century concept of individual rights is founded on the opposite and revolutionary idea -- that each individual is an end in himself, with his (or her) life and happiness as the moral purpose. That's what the United States' founding fathers meant by the individual's right to "life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness." These rights, being "unalienable," cannot be abrogated by government decree or majority vote.

Because these rights apply to each individual, nobody's rights can negate anyone else's. Individual rights are not entitlements to food, shelter, health care, money, love, sex, etc., forcibly extracted from others. They are freedoms of action that a rational being requires to choose and achieve the values that his life and happiness require, actions such as creative thought, productive work, voluntary association and free trade. Only such freedoms can yield peaceful coexistence and prosperity.

Individual rights are precisely what the UN's declaration is designed to destroy. No, it doesn't openly attack individual rights; that would be rejected outright by freer countries. It destroys rights by internal corruption -- by perverting the meaning of rights into its exact opposite.

The declaration first covers what appear to be legitimate rights, such as "the right to life, liberty and security of person," "the right to own property," and freedom of "thought" and "opinion." (The right to pursue happiness is absent, for reasons that will soon become obvious.) It then introduces a series of "economic rights," such as a person's "right" to work, paid holidays, protection against unemployment, social security, free education, and a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care .

If people are entitled to these, who will be forced to provide them? Whose property will be seized to pay for them?

Such "economic rights" obviously contradict the right to liberty and property. There can be no such thing as a right to violate the rights of others. "Economic rights" merely hand government the power to violate individual rights, thereby rendering the individual a slave to the needs and desires of others. They effectively make communism the social ideal. (This is made explicit in Article 29, which states: "Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.")

A tyrannical country such as China or North Korea can claim that it upholds "economic rights," and thereby derive moral sanction. Meanwhile, the United States -- the freest and most prosperous country on earth -- becomes the moral villain for not sufficiently protecting "economic rights," i.e., for not sufficiently sacrificing those individuals who are ambitious, creative and productive to those who are not.

When rights get perverted, so does justice -- and vice versa.

In 1920, Germany's National Socialist (Nazi) party adopted "economic rights" in its platform. And Stalin entrenched them into the Soviet Union's constitution. Doing so establishes the principle that the individual's life belongs to the collective, which, in essence, hands the government the power and the moral sanction to do whatever it wants with that life.

The declaration deserves moral condemnation and rejection. The only human rights are individual rights -- which have made possible the freedom and prosperity that we currently enjoy, but risk losing. Rather than allow political power lusters to destroy the remnants of individual rights that still protect us, we should be eternally vigilant in protecting and restoring our inalienable rights.

As for those countries which still blatantly violate individual rights, we should morally condemn them and boycott them -- not treat them as civilized members of the "world community." That's what should have been done fifty years ago.

2000 Article CrocketsGhost referenced as the basis for members can forfeit sovereignty for humanitarian purposes.

FreeRepublic.com "A Conservative News Forum"

UN report: Sovereignty can be forfeited on humanitarian grounds

Government News Keywords: NEW WORLD ORDER
Source: United Press International
Published: March 20, 2000 21:33 Author: WILLIAM M. REILLY
Posted on 03/20/2000 20:33:19 PST by Rudder
UNITED NATIONS, March 20 (UPI) -- A United Nations University study of NATO 's intervention in Kosovo said Monday a profound change in world politics has emerged, mainly that sovereignty can be forfeited on humanitarian grounds.

But the study co-edited by the Tokyo-based institution's vice rector, Ramesh Thakur, and Albrecht Schnabel with contributor Ray Funnel, a retired Australian air marshal, warned the precedent will have dangerously undermined international order unless world powers can agree on principles to guide future interventions, in similar circumstances. "Kosovo and The Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention" is billed as a "compendium of authoritative viewpoints on many dimensions of the 1999 crisis" and on recommended follow-up steps.

Those steps include promotion of "an international consensus about the point at which a state forfeits its sovereignty," and removal of veto power in the Security Council in exceptional circumstances "so that the support of a majority of the great powers is all that is required to permit states to engage in humanitarian war."

"Kosovo confronted us with an abiding challenge of humanitarian intervention: namely, is it morally just, legally permissible and militarily feasible?" asked Thakur. "In today's dangerously unstable world full of complex conflicts, concerned countries and citizens face the painful dilemma of being condemned if they do and damned if they don't.

"To use force unilaterally is to violate international law and undermine world order. Yet to respect sovereignty all the time is to be complicit in human rights violations sometimes. To argue that the U.N. Security Council must give its consent to humanitarian war is to risk policy paralysis by handing over the agenda to the most egregious and obstreperous."

"The bottom line question for us is this: Faced with another Holocaust or Rwanda-type genocide on the one hand, and a Security Council veto on the other, what would we do?" Thakur asked. "A new consensus on humanitarian intervention is urgently needed."

Contributors, the authors said, cited the need to reform the Security Council, including possible removal of veto power in such circumstances as those present in Kosovo.

The U.N. General Assembly has been wrestling with council reform for years now, including the status of veto for the present five permanent members of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States as well as any possible additions to the select club.

"The permanent members and their interests should not prevent the Security Council from getting involved and stall the U.N.'s attempts to provide assistance to those in need. Otherwise we might see more NATO-style actions with less or no UN involvement - and thus less order and less justice in our global community," said Schnabel, the other co-editor.

"It is good that the international system can tear down the walls of state sovereignty in cases where states kill their own people," he said. "Organizations like the U.N., however, need to be willing and able to confront these catastrophes wherever they occur."

Russian and Chinese opposition to military intervention in Kosovo prevented the Security Council from acting so NATO decided to intervene on its own.

Thakur said, "Many of today's wars are nasty, brutish and internal. The world community cannot help all victims, but must step in where it can make a difference. Selective indignation is inevitable, for we simply cannot intervene everywhere, every time. But we must still pursue policies of effective indignation. Humanitarian intervention must be collective, not unilateral. And it must be legitimate, not in violation of the agreed rules which comprise the foundations of world order."

The study, released at U.N. headquarters in New York, said, "continuing fallout from Kosovo has the potential to redraw the landscape of international politics, with significant ramifications for the UN, major powers and regional organizations, and the way in which world politics are understood and interpreted."

That fallout was from parties involved in the conflict, NATO allies, the immediate region surrounding the conflict, and further.

"Any possible argument that NATO might underwrite European stability has lost validity for Russia," the study said.

China's concern over what happened in Yugoslavia may be repeated in Asia, was also addressed.

"The problem of using force by the strong against the weak will only create disorder. While China does not want to challenge or compete with U.S. superiority, it rejects U.S. domination or hegemony," the UNU study said.

Many in Islamic countries argued that NATO committed strategic mistakes. Among them: not intervening earlier, refusing to deploy ground troops to put a decisive end to the conflict, and not anticipating President Slobodan Milosevic's resort to the eviction of hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Kosovo, the study said.

It pointed out many in those countries supported the war because they identified with the Muslim victims in Kosovo.

Reflecting the positions of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization for African Unity in particular, according to the South African government, concluded that unilateral intervention, no matter how noble the motive, is not acceptable, said the study. A broad, non-discriminatory multi-lateralism (in all areas, including trade and security) is the best safeguard for the developing world against unilateral misuse of power by the strong.

"For many developing countries, the international community runs the danger of becoming hostage to the machinations of a few privileged and powerful countries," the study said. "Many developing countries may feel compelled to move toward ensuring greater security for themselves through acquisition of more weaponry. There is almost total unanimity in India that the country needs to strengthen itself militarily to the extent that there can be no scope for any interference in the affairs on the sub-continent."

Critics of NATO's Kosovo action said in the study that international efforts to contain the conflict were "modest and hesitant. Later, faced with a brutal and rapidly escalating war, the international community reacted with consternation and confusion."

Said the study, "What was at stake was not only the fate of the Albanian population of Kosovo. It was also the standing and reputation of the major democratic countries involved in the NATO operation and the credibility of NATO itself."

(The study is available at www.unu.edu and UNU Press plans to publish a book based on the study later this year.)


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Moral of the story, there's two: 1. Next time you invade a sovereign nation, don't forget to send an invite to the UN; 2. Everything Clinton touches turns to sh*t.
1 Posted on 03/20/2000 20:33:19 PST by Rudder
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To: Rudder
UNU is full of idiots... think about it. Who wants to attend a UN University??

I think I'll link this story on my website at:
Globalism Watch

2 Posted on 03/20/2000 20:48:33 PST by GeronL
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To: Rudder
...sovereignty can be forfeited on humanitarian grounds ... Looks like a case can be made against China losing all sovereignty over Taiwan, any talk of Taiwan being a Chinese providence is just that ... talk. The case grows only stronger with each threat.

3 Posted on 03/20/2000 20:56:43 PST by A. Morgan
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To: A. Morgan Rudder JohnHuang2
From the UN

New study warns Kosovo crisis set a dangerous precedent 20 March -- A new study of the Kosovo crisis concludes that the 1999 NATO military intervention was based on "selective indignation" to a humanitarian crisis which, though understandable, set a dangerous precedent.

The study, released today by the UN University, argues that NATO's military intervention in Kosovo produced a profound change in world politics, namely that nations can temporarily forfeit sovereignty on humanitarian grounds. But unless world powers agree on principles to guide interventions in similar circumstances, that precedent will have dangerously undermined international order, it concludes.

Titled "Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention", the study is a compendium of views and interpretations of the Kosovo crisis from diverse perspectives: the conflict parties, NATO allies, the immediate region surrounding the conflict, and further afield. It is co-edited by Prof. Ramesh Thakur, Vice-Rector of the UN University, and Dr. Albrecht Schnabel of the University's Peace and Governance Programme.

Among the recommendations of the study is the promotion of "an international consensus about the point at which a State forfeits sovereignty." It also suggests removal of veto power in the Security Council in exceptional circumstances "so that the support of a majority of the great powers is all that is required to permit states to engage in humanitarian war."

The study argues that the only lasting solution to the Kosovo crisis is a political settlement that reconciles legitimate ethnic Albanian interests about the future of the province and long-term peace with Serbia. The current situation in Kosovo can only be an interim solution.

Noting that it is easier to bomb than to build, the study argues that communities bitterly divided for centuries cannot be forced by outsiders to live together peacefully. It also warns that in the face of persistent threats of ethnic cleansing of Serbs by Albanians, the lack of international solidarity and effective action further entrenches the victim mentality among Serbs and undermines prospects of long-term stability.

The full text of the study is available at www.unu.edu.

4 Posted on 03/20/2000 21:04:47 PST by GeronL
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To: Rudder
Here are the results of my own $300k, 5 year study on the subject:

He who has the guns makes the rules.

It was ever thus.

5 Posted on 03/20/2000 21:11:07 PST by jlogajan
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