Two weeks old, but refers to a yet to come UN meeting that threatens to be a tranzis love-fest. Too bad Chiraq will probably miss it due to his brainfart, he would have been delighted, him being a socialist and an anti-globo. Hat tip ¡No Pasarán! comments section.
U.N. bureaucrats are making a quiet power grab.
In less than a month's time â the 16th and 17th of September â the world's great and good will be gathering at the U.N. building in Manhattan for what is officially called the High Level Plenary Meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. This meeting, attended by the heads of government of most countries, including the major powers, has become a regular event in recent years, but one of ceremonial importance rather than of substance.
This year, however, the meeting will be very significant indeed. For the plenary session will almost certainly pass an obscure document, now circulating in draft form among U.N. delegations, that calls on the assembled governments to re-affirm their support for the U.N.'s Millennium Declaration Goals and the other declarations of U.N. conferences over the past 30 years. It will ask them to support the achievement of these goals in a coordinated and integrated manner, to renew their commitment to...
Falling asleep already, are you? Well, that is precisely the intention of those who composed these anodyne phrases. When bureaucrats seize power, they do it not with swords but with chloroform. And this document is a power-grab by people of whom you have never heard, the officials of the U.N. Secretariat, working in tandem with the diplomats of those countries and international organizations that would like to expand the power of the U.N. and its various agencies over both the citizens and governments of member nations.
You might suppose that, given the spreading scandal of the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program, in which a regiment of U.N. officials was corruptly assisting Saddam Hussein to outwit the very sanctions they were supposed to be enforcing, the U.N. Secretariat would be on the defensive. And tucked away towards the end of this document, there are provisions to increase the transparency and accountability of U.N. agencies and their officials. In a rational world they would be whole of the document.
Alas, a reader who has the fortitude and diligence to plough through all of its 158 provisions will discover that its main thrust is to extend the U.N.'s power directly into countries and over the lives of citizens, corporations and private bodies. That ambition is not, of course, advertised. Most of the language used, in addition to being sleep-inducing, is mildly benevolent in tone. For instance:
"We recognize that development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing and cannot be enjoyed without each other."
Sounds nice, doesn't it? Of course, it's not true. China today is enjoying economic development of almost unprecedented rapidity under a government that has only a limited regard for such human rights as free speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion. Always beware when politicians throw platitudes at you.
More dangerous than platitudes, however, are commitments. This is because the governments signing onto them often have only the vaguest notion of what they imply. Now there are 158 provisions in this document, some of which contain ten or twelve commitments. So the four commitments that follow offer merely a taste of a truly gargantuan meal. Still, here goes:
The section on the environment commits governments to promoting something called "sustainable consumption." Consumption is your standard of living. If that commitment is not mere flapdoodle, it means that a government that endorses it will limit its citizens' standard of living in line with the U.N.'s view of its environmental sustainability. And we all know from other pronouncements that the U.N. and its agencies consider U.S. consumption to be unsustainable.
The same section commits governments to undertake "concerted global action" to meet their commitments and obligations under the Kyoto protocol. Well, the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 against Kyoto some years ago â and earlier this year it rejected Senator John McCain's legislation that would have introduced Kyoto-style targets and penalties. So which body and set of rules are to govern Americans â the U.S. Congress and the laws it passes? Or the U.N. and its conference declarations?
The section on human rights calls for "equal participation and representation of men and women in government decision-making bodies." Again, a very nice sentiment, but one with a problem. To implement it as the U.N. expects, governments would have to nominate members of congress. In democracies, however, it is voters rather than governments who choose their representatives â and they are statistically unlikely to choose a cross section of the population. The only way to obtain "gender equality" in parliamentary bodies is to abolish democracy.
And at different points the U.N. document calls on governments to accept and implement treaties such as the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty and that establishing the International Criminal Court that the U.S. government â both Congress and the administration â has rejected.
But how important is all this? What harm is there in signing onto to these desirable outcomes even if we believe that they are either unobtainable or very distant? As scholars like John Fonte of the Hudson Institute have shown, there is very considerable potential harm. These treaties and declarations include enforcement mechanisms such as "monitoring" bodies. Sovereign democratic nations such as Canada have had to host delegations from the U.N. investigating whether their budgetary cuts in welfare violate some commitment they made on welfare rights.
Worse, these commitments change when judges interpret the treaties in a way no one would have predicted when they were signed. A topical example: the British government is currently trying to deport terrorist suspects it considers a danger to the public, but the courts maintain that such deportations are contrary to Britain's signature on the European Declaration of Human Rights.
In other words, the most sensitive and vital political questions are removed from democratic parliaments and the voters and handed over to an international committee nominated by foreign and often despotic regimes.
Yet the U.S. government is coming under enormous pressure to endorse this catalogue of potential interventions as a result of pressure not from despots but from its closest democratic friends. The European Union is strongly in favor of transferring power from nation states to transnational bodies because it is itself a trans-national body â and sees itself as the harbinger of a new sort of trans-national political order superior to sovereign nation states. And the current presidency of the E.U. is held by Tony Blair, the president's best friend, who is himself an extreme devotee of "muscular multilateralism."
Blair's pressure is likely to be augmented, moreover, by "realists" in the Bush administration who will argue that opposing the U.N. document is pointless. It will annoy our allies, alienate the international community, and divide America â all to stop a document that is best meaningless and at worst utopian.
Such diplomatic trade-offs must sometimes be made. Unfortunately, they never stop with the first one. Some years in the future, when a U.N. committee wants to hold us to our word, or a U.S. court cites the U.N. declaration to overturn domestic law, the same "realists" will argue that fighting this interference is not worth alienating our allies, losing a U.N. vote, or sacrificing some other matter the State Department then thinks vital.
The time to halt this diplomatic rake's progress is now â and to do so on the principle that Americans are a self-governing people. If Tony Blair is prepared to surrender Britain's democratic sovereignty to either a European government or a U.N. committee, that is a matter for him and the British people. American democracy needs no external examiners.
â John O'Sullivan is editor at large of National Review..
"Multipolar world" seems to be all the rage theses days... Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, all linked by growing ties. I wonder if France, which plays the China card and based its opposition to the USA on the concept of a "multipolar world", will dare go all the way, and join up this unholly alliance, even sans avoir l'air d'y toucher?
See also the article about the coming UN meeting, where Iran will have a soapbox to launch its islamic pole. Tranzis meet islamonuts?
by Amir Taheri
Gulf News
When he launched the liberation of Iraq in 2003, US President George W. Bush promised to help the greater Middle East, the Muslim heartland from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, to bury a despotic past and build a democratic future. As if on cue, political elites throughout the region soon began to use "democracy" as a catch-word.
The country generally regarded as most ripe for democracy was Iran. Bush singled it out for praise as the nation that could lead the region in democratisation. President Mohammad Khatami spoke of "religious democracy", an oxymoron in which vice pays tribute to virtue.
For the past three years, tens of thousands of students have demonstrated throughout Iran demanding "Democracy, Now!"
Last week Iran's newly elected-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave his reply: Democracy? Never! The answer is spelled out in a 7,000-word document that he presented as his government's "short and long term programmes" to the Islamic Majlis (parliament).
In it, he categorically states that Western "ideas and concepts of government" have no place in Islam. Without using the word democracy, the document states that the new administration "bravely rejects all alien political ideas" as incompatible with Islam.
The document says that in a Muslim country power belongs to God. The exercise of that power is the privilege of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and, after him the 12 Imams of duodecimo Shiism. Since the 12th Imam is in "grand occultation", thus not exercising power on a day-to-day basis, the task devolves to "chosen ones from the family of the Prophet". In the case of Iran today it means Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the "Supreme Guide" who claims to be a descendant of Hussain, the third Imam.
Ahmadinejad says that not only will he fight any form of democratisation in Iran but would mobilise the nation's resources to prevent the United States from imposing the Bush plan on the Middle East.
In practical terms it could mean a switch in Iranian policy in Afghanistan and Iraq. Under Khatami, Tehran's policy was to make sure that the Americans were bled to the maximum while allowing them to establish friendly regimes in Kabul and Baghdad. Now, however, Iran may well want to bleed the Americans more but deny them even the mere crumb.
The document states that the region is heading for a "clash of civilisations" in which the Islamic Republic represents Islam while the United States carries the banner of a West that has forgotten God. The document calls the US "the hegemon" and asserts that the Bush plan for the Greater Middle East is a device to slow down the decline of the United States as a superpower.
"Despite its pharaonic roars," the document claims, "the hegemon is in its last throes."
The US is a "sunset" (ofuli) power while the Islamic Republic is a "sunrise" (tolu'ee) one.
Going to crumble
The US is going to crumble because it is based on a system that produces "endless material needs" which lead into "the desert of lust" where men are handed over to Satan. The Islamic Republic is going to win because it has God on its side. The Americans may "mock the divine system" in Iran. But Islamic Iran is the model for the future of mankind.
Ahmadinejad envisages a "multi-polar" world in which the United States would have a place as long as its process of "fading away" is not completed. Other poles, according to the documents, would include "sunrise" powers such as China and India and "sunset" ones such as the European Union. But the most dynamic of the new poles would be the Islamic one with Iran as a "core power" around which all Muslim nations will coalesce.
The goal of the "Islamic pole" would be to unite the world under the banner of Islam, as the "final divine message" and "the only true faith". But it is unclear whether this is to be achieved during the 20-year period of the strategy or within a broader timeframe.
It is not only in foreign policy that Ahmadinejad opposes "American ideas". His economic, social and cultural programme, too, are designed in defiance of Western capitalist models. He wants the state to play a central role in all aspects of the nation's life and emphasises the importance of central planning. In fact, the Islamic Republic intends to compete with the United States on the global stage as a producer of culture.
Ahmadinejad promises to help Iranian music drive American music out of the world markets, starting with Muslim countries. In hyperbolic tones he claims that Persian music exports could earn Iran more than oil.
The new government will even help arrange marriages for young men who might find it difficult to do so on their own. (No such assistance is offered to young women.)
Ahmadinejad's economic policy is aimed at self-sufficiency so that the Islamic Republic would not become dependent on the global system dominated by the United States. Iran will develop its nuclear programme the way it sees fit, regardless of whatever the outside world might say.
The programme does not shy away from big social engineering ideas.
For example, it promises to reduce the number of villages in Iran from 66,000 to just 10,000. This would enable the central government to concentrate the rural population and provide it with better and cheaper public services. But it would also mean relocating almost 30 million people.
To carry out his ambitious programme, Ahmadinejad has created a strong and unusually united cabinet. He also starts work at a time that, thanks to spiralling oil prices, his government has almost $200 million (Dh 734 million) a day to play with.
At the United Nations General Assembly in New York next month, Ahmadinejad is expected to fire the first shot in what he sees as a duel between the Islamic Republic and the United States over who sets the future agenda of mankind.
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/04/2005 14:48 Comments ||
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#2
This won't work. Poland will never be Islamic.
Posted by: Rafael ||
09/04/2005 15:23 Comments ||
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#3
"For example, it promises to reduce the number of villages in Iran from 66,000 to just 10,000. This would enable the central government to concentrate the rural population and provide it with better and cheaper public services. But it would also mean relocating almost 30 million people."
Stalin would be proud. How many of these 30 mil people won't make it where they are going?
Posted by: Mark E. ||
09/04/2005 15:52 Comments ||
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#4
How many of these 30 mil people won't make it where they are going?
all the Kurds
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/04/2005 16:36 Comments ||
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#5
Well, now that Mugabe has taken the art of economics and political management to an unheard of apex in his country, sounds like this bird wants to follow in Mugabe's footsteps.
#7
France will team with the Mullahs and Chinese. They already have. They are just nuanced about it.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
09/04/2005 19:06 Comments ||
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#8
Ahmadinejad promises to help Iranian music drive American music out of the world markets, starting with Muslim countries. In hyperbolic tones he claims that Persian music exports could earn Iran more than oil.
Ahmadinejad, the Ayatollah of Rock & Rollah. Talk like this is why the West has never taken the buffoons of Islam seriously. We let them stew, posture and seethe until they become obstreperous enough to cause trouble, then we kill them.
"...Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence...
All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change..."
In a nutshell, "No".
However, in a way he is correct, but not about Americans as a whole. About a small, terribly weak and fragile minority of Americans who are overwhelmed.
You have heard of them before. They are frightened of violence in the movies and on television. And in video games, and in comic books. And they are frightened of the violence involved in grading children, if it involves traumatizing them by giving them an "F". They are frightened of the thunder, of the storm, of loud noises and abnormality. And any form of conflict horrifies them beyond belief--there can be no excuse for any kind of violence against anyone for anything.
Being afraid is their way of life.
They are not independent creatures, they are herd animals. They imagine themselves as part of a human herd, surrendering their individuality, their individual responsibility, in any way they can to the herd. It, Leviathan, as Thomas Hobbes conceived it, is their God.
Only rarely does it have what can be called a leader. Instead, it has mouthpieces who parrot the ad hoc consensus to the rest, and for parroting are called leaders. When the herd is confident, so is its empty message. Unified, singular, cleary understood and meaningless. But the herd recites it flawlessly. When the herd has lost its confidence, its message is confused, degenerating into bleating and screaming as only sheep can scream.
Others are either of the herd, or not of the herd. All that are of the herd are good, and those not of the herd are evil. That which opposes the herd and their ad hoc direction is evil incarnate.
But when something happens that strips away so much of the confidence of the herd that the herd itself is in danger of collapse, truly for the herd animals it is like the end of the world itself. Responsibility resigned comes flooding back. Innumerable decisions that can no longer be ignored must be decided, and even refusing to decide is a decision. There is no one to save them if they stumble.
#2
My analysis is somewhat different. The so called progressives are afraid of change primarily because they see change being mostly for the worse. This thinking stems from their own personal life experience of receiving money they didn't earn (whether inherited or welfare) and lacking the skills or ability to improve their life. They see changes in their own lives resulting in things getting progressively worse and extrapolate this to the world at large.
#3
David Brooks is the conservative columnist for the New York Times. He used to write for the Weekly Standard, and before that, for the WSJ Op-Ed page. This column accuses the Bush administration of being incompetent, and suggests that the electorate could start electing liberals again into office. I suppose we'll find out in 2006.
I do find his accusation that the Federal government is failing to "protect the weak" kind of weird, though. Rescue work isn't like flipping a light switch. The city of New Orleans is under water. Recovery is going to be a huge undertaking. No quick solutions here. My feeling is that he's been spending too much time talking to liberals at his new job, and is now in the process of trying become as liberal as Frank Rich and Nick Kristof.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
