Showing posts with label UN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UN. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Palestinian Resolution Flops

The Palestinians had a resolution to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in three years. It made it all the way to the UN Security Council, and then failed to get enough votes to continue. It needed nine of the fifteen members to vote for it, and even then, given that the two who voted no where the US and Australia, it still wasn't going to happen. After all, the US has veto power.
Even if it had passed, how, exactly would they have enforced it? It was, like pretty much every other UN resolution ever, a propaganda gimmick.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Throwing money down the rathole

We're giving more money to the UN, while Sequester continues to hit the military hard. We should cut money from the dictators and incompetent/corrupt bureaucrats in UN before we cut money from the military.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

We're finally doing something about the UN

Its nice to see that someone is finally doing something to combat the UN's inefficiencies and corruption. 

US, other nations quietly maneuvering to rein in sprawling, inefficient UN system

Frustrated by the epic inefficiency, sprawling disorganization and free-spending of their money by the United Nations, a group of Western donor nations, including the U.S., has been meeting quietly to develop a strategy to rein in the world organization’s more than $20 billion a year in anti-poverty assistance – which even parts of the U.N. concede hasn’t done much to relieve poverty.
...

The U.N. organizations themselves — including such high-profile entities as the United Nations Development Program, UNICEF, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization and more than 30 others —are not invited to the meetings.
...
I doubt that they'll be able to do enough, but this might bring some sorely needed reform to the UN. Unfortunately, they aren't trying to clean house on, for example, the UN Human Rights council, which includes members who have a scant regard for human rights.
As I've said in the past, the UN is not a pro-freedom organization. When the UN does something, we really need to take that into account and consider what their real motives might be.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Israel stands up to UN human rights council

From BBC:
Israel boycotts UN rights council in unprecedented move

Israel is boycotting the UN human rights council's review of their country. 
In the past I've used the same human rights council that Israel is boycotting as the prime example of why the UN sucks. Israel is perfectly justified.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Constitution Outdated? I don't think so!

From CBS:
Professor: Take our country back, from the Constitution

  Original article tabbed and bolded:
I've got a simple idea: Let's give up on the Constitution.
 And what makes you think that this is a good idea?
I know, it sounds radical, but it's really not. Constitutional disobedience is as American as apple pie.
For example, most of our greatest Presidents -- Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and both Roosevelts -- had doubts about the Constitution, and many of them disobeyed it when it got in their way.
Thank you for pointing that out. You're right that many presidents often disobeyed the Constitution, and that many of them had doubts about it. Let's go over your examples, shall we?
Jefferson: An Anti-Federalist, the party originally in opposition to the Constitution - and which only agreed to the Constitution on the condition that the Bill of Rights be added.
Lincoln: A Republican, engaged in Constitutionally questionable activities to keep the United Stated, United. Article One, Section Ten of the Constitution has a list of things that the States are not allowed to do. It is the only part of the Constitution that places limits upon the powers of the individual states. Secession is not on the list of powers prohibited to the states. Its important to remember that the South seceded because of state's rights and slavery (Confederate Constitution), and Lincoln contested the issue because he didn't want the Union to break apart (which is why the Emancipation Proclamation is kind of a joke - It only applied to the seceding states, which Lincoln had absolutely no control over at the time it was written).
Woodrow Wilson, on the other hand, instituted the draft to fight WWI, and afterwards fought with the Senate to join the League of Nations, the the even less effective precursor to the absolutely corrupt and ineffective UN.
FDR takes the cake, so I'll summarize: Social Security, Medicare, the rest of the New Deal, the draft during WWII. There is a reason why, after he died, the 22nd amendment was easily passed and ratified. He stacked the Supreme Court so that they would rule in his favor. He was elected for an unprecedented four terms and gained so much power that when he died, everyone else took immediate action to ensure no one could gain that much power ever again.
In conclusion, one of the examples took care of his objections to the constitution by amending it, one of them abused his power to hold the Union together, and two of them violated the Constitution for personal power. The Constitution didn't cover everything, but it's nice to know that when abuse of power happens, it is a violation of the Constitution.
To be clear, I don't think we should give up on everything in the Constitution. The Constitution has many important and inspiring provisions, but we should obey these because they are important and inspiring, not because a bunch of people who are now long-dead favored them two centuries ago.
 Just propose amendments, like everyone else.
Unfortunately, the Constitution also contains some provisions that are not so inspiring. For example, one allows a presidential candidate who is rejected by a majority of the American people to assume office. Suppose that Barack Obama really wasn't a natural-born citizen. So what?
There is a reason for that one. If Obama isn't a natural-born citizen, he will no doubt have sympathies for his place of birth, which, if his place of birth is hostile to the US, could very well lead to the US getting walloped because of the Chief Executive's sympathies.
Constitutional obedience has a pernicious impact on our political culture. Take the recent debate about gun control. None of my friends can believe it, but I happen to be skeptical of most forms of gun control.
I understand, though, that's not everyone's view, and I'm eager to talk with people who disagree.
That's good.
But what happens when the issue gets Constitutional-ized? Then we turn the question over to lawyers, and lawyers do with it what lawyers do. So instead of talking about whether gun control makes sense in our country, we talk about what people thought of it two centuries ago.
What they thought about it two centuries ago was that it is a necessary right for us to remain a free people, and therefore required protection (at least, the Anti-Federalists thought it needed protection - Turns out, they were right) .
Worse yet, talking about gun control in terms of constitutional obligation needlessly raises the temperature of political discussion. Instead of a question on policy, about which reasonable people can disagree, it becomes a test of one's commitment to our foundational document and, so, to America itself.

It provides an extra layer of protection to an absolutely necessary right. I'll take a guarantee of a right over rationality in a discussion.
This is our country. We live in it, and we have a right to the kind of country we want. We would not allow the French or the United Nations to rule us, and neither should we allow people who died over two centuries ago and knew nothing of our country as it exists today.
They might not know anything of our country as it currently exists, but they don't rule our country so it doesn't matter. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, but in the end, its all about limiting the power of those who rule, not ruling our nation.
If we are to take back our own country, we have to start making decisions for ourselves, and stop deferring to an ancient and outdated document.
 An ancient and outdated document that protects your rights and limits the powers of government so that it can't take them away.

Monday, January 14, 2013

The UN: About as useful as...

t*ts on a boar hog.
Another example of the UN's remarkable incompetence from Fox News. As if I needed another reason to hold them in contempt. And yet we continue to throw good money after bad supporting them.

Check it out:
UN’s $5.7B anti-poverty agency doesn’t do much to reduce poverty, according to its own assessment

Friday, October 26, 2012

Why I hate the UN

The UN is a hotbed of despotism, anti-semitism, cronyism, and deception.
The UN Human Rights council includes Cuba, China, many other countries where human rights are a low priority, and until recently, Libya.  This Council has recommended a boycott on American companies that do business in Israel and the areas of "Palestine" that Israel occupies.

Their officials decry our free speech, speak out against one of our candidates, and send election observers here - some of whom come from countries where Stalin's famous quote "Its not those who vote who count, but those who count the votes" is the reality.

The UN is not our friend or ally. They are not an institution which believes in human freedom. At the beginning the UN included the Soviet Union as a permanent member of the security council, with full veto power. While the US is also a permanent member of the security council, and thus enjoys that same veto power, it must be realized that whatever the UN did before the fall of the USSR had to meet the approval of the Soviet Politburo, or they would veto it. Communist China, the People's Republic of China, is also a permanent member of the UN security council. The USSR is gone, but the PRC remains. We must not allow the UN to push us around. Let us stop funding the UN and begin to use our own veto power too prevent it from doing anything harmful to our republic, just as the Soviets once did, and the Communist Chinese still do.
Why don't we take the money that we send to the UN, which fails more than it succeeds at keeping the peace (As the Tutsi can attest) and give it to our military, which actually does something useful - protecting us from those who would take our freedom. Let us stop caring what the "International Community" thinks about our candidates for higher office. Romney and Obama aren't running for President of the World. They're running for President of the US, and the freedom, safety, and prosperity (in that order) of their constituency should be all they care about.

Sources:
U.N. Official Warns: Electing Mitt Romney Means ‘Democratic Mandate for Torture’

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Why the UN Small Arms Treaty Sucks

The UN Small arms treaty is aimed at preventing or at least alleviating the problem of various terrorist, criminal, and insurgent groups getting their hands upon small arms, in order to help prevent crime and human rights violations. Or at least, that's what the UN would have you believe.

1. It won't work.
The UN is an international joke for several reasons. One of them is their complete inability to enforce anything without target country permission. Iran, "rogue state" is perhaps the best example of this. If a country doesn't want to enforce the provisions of the treaty, even if they've signed the treaty, the UN will be powerless.

2. This treaty isn't about preventing crime and human rights violations. If the UN actually cared about human rights, the People's Republic of China (PRC) wouldn't be on the UN's Human Rights Council. Keeping the terrorists and criminals from getting weapons would be wonderful, but this treaty is more likely to affect the very people whom it claims to help.

3. They talk of tracing the firearms back to their last legitimate owner, and "holding them accountable". The problem comes when the last legitimate owner was a government, or a citizen of a country that is not a signatory of the treaty, or that chooses to violate the treaty. Then the UN is stuck, impotent.

4. Tracing the firearms to the last legitimate owner would require gun registration, something that is seen as being a precursor to confiscation of firearms, and rightfully so, as the previous examples of Hitler and other totalitarian human rights violators have shown.

I'm not comparing the UN to the Nazis, as the UN doesn't fit that label (they fall under the label of "power-hungry kleptocrats", not "psychopathic sadistic bastards"), but whenever they say that they're doing something to prevent human rights violations, remember that their Human Rights Council includes the PRC, Cuba, and Djibouti, all "single party republics", which is another way of saying "totalitarian dictatorship". It also includes various other countries where human rights are not respected. This is why I consider it to be a sick joke whenever the UN references human rights.

Sources:
Fox News: Proposed U.N. Treaty To Regulate Global Firearms Trade Raising Concerns For U.S. Gun Owners

Human Rights Council: Membership of the Human Rights Council


United Nations Disarmament: Small Arms and Light Weapons