(no subject)
May. 26th, 2005 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
noahgibbsI'd pass on the word from MoveOn that we Californians need to call Feinstein to try to get her to block the Bolton nomination right fucking now...
But the phone lines are so constantly busy that apparently you all got the memo. Go you!
For those not in the know (or not in CA): they need one more democratic senator to embrace sanity in order to shoot down Bolton as UN ambassador. Five Dems are currently in favor of keeping him. Feinstein is one. Here's hoping...
But the phone lines are so constantly busy that apparently you all got the memo. Go you!
For those not in the know (or not in CA): they need one more democratic senator to embrace sanity in order to shoot down Bolton as UN ambassador. Five Dems are currently in favor of keeping him. Feinstein is one. Here's hoping...
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 08:59 pm (UTC)San Francisco - 415-393-0707
LA - 310-914-7300
San Diego - 619-231-9712
Fresno (which a friend of mine insists on calling FresYes) - 559-485-7430
no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 09:23 pm (UTC)Hrmmm...
Zhaneel
no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 09:23 pm (UTC)Zhaneel
no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 09:45 pm (UTC)http://feinstein.senate.gov/05releases/r-bolton-nom.htm
http://www.dembloggers.com/story/2005/5/8/132426/8704
I want to see him get the job, as he's the perfect example of Bush turned up to 11. The majority who supported Bush are hypocrites if they don't also support Bolton. I had my say last November and will be sticking my head in the ground until another election.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 09:47 pm (UTC)Guess we'll find out when the vote happens, regardless.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 09:49 pm (UTC)Don't get me wrong - the Democrats have plenty of "most idiotic excesses", too, I just try to make it clear that I don't particularly support them. You're supporting the Bolton thing, which is what makes me curious.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 10:07 pm (UTC)The US will be well-served by a hard-ass UN ambassador. The UN is incredibly corrupt, and damages almost everything it touches - not even the most extremist anti-American commentators have leveled accusations against the US which compare to the credible accusations being leveled against the UN (sex crimes and rape camps run by UN peacekeepers). Further, even without the latest bout of corruption being uncovered, the UN is a fundamentally anti-democratic and anti-American institution, as it represents the interests of a bunch of thugs and kleptocrats, rather than the interests of the people of the world. Having an UN ambassador who is willing to play hardball, who is willing to continue asking hard questions in the face of evasions, and who is willing to tell undiplomatic truths is a good thing.
The UN does not achieve any measurable good which could not be achieved through other means. My favorite UN proposal of all time was to put Mikhail Gorbachev in charge of it, as he'd managed to destroy everything else he'd been put in charge of. The UN could fall over into the East River, and I'd mainly be worried about people in Brooklyn getting wet.
Thankyou for saying this...
Date: 2005-05-26 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 10:13 pm (UTC)If you've got documentation on this, I'd love to see it. I'm not disagreeing, I just haven't heard this before.
Your view of the UN basically being something we should destroy rather than participate in *does* line up well with making Bolton our representative.
The problem I have is that he seems to go past "hard ass" and "undiplomatic" to "uninterested in working with others". While I have relatively little problem with that as a personal flaw in a random human being, it seems a fatal flaw in a diplomat. If he has to be in charge and dictating terms to get anything done, he's doing to deal poorly in an environment where others get a say. Speaking of, y'know, anti-democratic.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 10:14 pm (UTC)UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 10:24 pm (UTC)http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3686173.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1413501,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52333-2005Mar20.html
Re: UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 10:28 pm (UTC)I'll read the other articles, because that one is a far cry from 'rape camps'.
Re: UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 10:30 pm (UTC)Yeah, that. That's from the one in the Christian Science Monitor.
Re: UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 10:47 pm (UTC)Re: UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 10:49 pm (UTC)Re: UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 10:52 pm (UTC)Re: UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 11:03 pm (UTC)Unlike the UN peacekeepers in Kosovo, Congo, and elsewhere.
The difference is not that American human beings are better than human beings from other countries, but that our institutions aren't lawless. When US soldiers abuse prisoners, they get arrested and investigated and tried, and the Army issues a press release about it, with pictures, months before the media bothers to write anything about it.
Re: UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 11:19 pm (UTC)Re: UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 11:26 pm (UTC)When you have a bunch of foreigners with money who are nowhere near their families/girlfriends/friends/etc, you discover that they're more likely to pay for sex. When that happens, the local sex industry gets a big infusion of money, and attempts to make itself larger to meet demand. Specifically in, say, Kosovo, the local sex industry is pretty damn dodgy and does some pretty bad things, especially when attempting to expand quickly. Yay for capitalism in action.
Re: UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 11:43 pm (UTC)I did a quick google for UN+rape+(kosovo|congo|somalia), and posted links from near the top of the results. You may wish to dig further before engaging in a hair-splitting discussion over the exact nature and quantity of the accusations; the general point is that UN peacekeeping forces have been credibly accused of some pretty awful things in a variety of different locations, and of buck-passing and stonewalling when the issue is raised. Such an institution is in serious need of reform, if it's worth preserving at all - an institution which thinks that the dictators of Libya and Syria should have representatives on something it calls a "Human Rights Council", and that Zionism is a worse form of oppression than any other in the world today, possibly excepting South African apartheid, is a strong argument that there are fundamental, unfixable, flaws with the institution.
If the rest of the UN is incapable of working with Bolton, that's not a great loss. The UN needs the US to operate in anything resembling an effective manner, and if the talking shop of the dictators of the world can't function effectively, it's hardly a tragedy. Those problems which truly require international efforts to solve can be handled outside the UN system.
People didn't like Jeanne Kirkpatrick as our UN ambassador, either, because she was undiplomatic and abrasive. The UN learned to cope. They can cope with Bolton, and the process of coping will do it some good.
Re: UN sex crime reports
Date: 2005-05-26 11:53 pm (UTC)Right. There were *no* reports with any detail (nothing beyond the half-sentence you mentioned, at least that I saw) that it was being done by the UN troops. The reports all seemed to be that the UN troops were giving money to brothels that had such practices.
By such practices, I mean "forced into prostitution" rather than specifically being raped. I didn't see anything specifically about that, either.
I'll go investigate on my own. I'm taking your word for it that there are more accusations, but apparently they're well-buried, even by, say, the BBC, or at least they're not considered worth talking about. That means that either 1) there's some reason the newsfolk don't want to talk about them or 2) there's nothing especially credible.
I'll look farther. But none of the articles you listed mention any specific cases of UN troops doing what you're talking about. That seems to me to be a pretty good indicator that, at worst, the UN troops are aiding and abetting such things by paying for them, at least by and large. I'm sure there are one or two who have done worse, because there are a lot of UN troops so statistically some of them are going to be bad people.
Nonetheless, it mainly seems to be "aiding and abetting by paying for it." Speaking as an occasional Wal-Mart shopper who has, in the past, purchased Nike tennis shoes, I'm not going to hoist them on a pike for that.
I'm not specifically familiar with the UN views on Zionism, but I can't say I'm on Israel's side against the (former) Palestinians, either. I'm roughly aware of your views on the topic, and I consider them pretty myopic. As far as I'm concerned, both sides are being about equally despicable about the whole mess.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-27 12:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-27 12:38 am (UTC)