french sense of humour ;)

Someone, straighten me out. I'm too lazy to research the details of the fact that kissinger coddled the Kurds when they were fighting against the _____? on our behalf and then when they were no longer needed. he sold them out allowing__________? to ravage the kurds.

Someone, straighten me out. I'm too lazy to research the details of the fact that kissinger coddled the Kurds when they were fighting against the _____? on our behalf and then when they were no longer needed. he sold them out allowing__________? to ravage the kurds.

The thing that galls me about our so-called moral mission to get Hussein because he is a monster, a butcher, a killer of his own people, etc, is that we, the USA and many of our mportant citizens, have played footsie with dozens of such dictators in the 20th century. The hero Charles Lindberg was an admirer and supporter of Adolph Hitler. Famous entertainers and politicos lavished praise on the iron-fisted dictator Fulgencio Batista in Cuba for about 30 yrs. The US backed and supported dictators in central and south America such as the generals in Argentina, Pinoche in Chile, etc. And we supported assassinations of leaders we didn't like; Guzman in Gautemala - 1946, Salvador Allende in Chile 1960's, etc.

The sanctimonious hypocrisy is nauseating.

Including Ossama and Saddam for short whiles, when it came handy.

dagmaraka



I think the principles upon which the UN were founded are unimpeachable. However, for the reasons stated they are just unworkable. An organization with no teeth cannot work. Unfortunately mankind still lives under the premise that might makes right.

OSCE. Who are they specifically?
As I remember it the surrounding European nations did nothing until the US joined with them. I remember thinking why should we get involved it's time for the Europeans to stand up and be counted.

US Interventions. I would never defend them many mistakes have been made by successive administrations. And we have paid the price for those blunders with blood. Viet Nam being the most costly and by far the greatest.

Why do I call the UN irrelevant because despite all the humanitarian good they do they are unable to perform their most important function and the reason for their establishment and that being to keep the peace

American humour?

Frolic: you're making me cry with that one. But it puts a line under what Billy Falcon and dagmaraka have been saying, among others in this discussion.

PS I love your "You want the truth" thing.

Well, it seems we agree on one point: that the UN lacks the clout and might to sufficiently impose the principles upon they were founded and fulfill its role of establishing and keeping peace(and justice, I would add).

My solution to that would be to give the UN that clout and might. Thats why I think its a shame, literally, that the US have troed so hard to block the International Criminal Court (for those who committed war crimes).

nimh, once again i agree. and i would only add, that i believe it is possible for the un to have teeth. unfortunately it has been postponed by the current war. un was growing stronger in its missions before 'it'. by the way, au, what exactly do you picture under the name United Nations? For to me it seems you keep talking about one particle of this gigantic mechanism. Thus I ask again, if you look at the entire heap of all the other work of the UN, putting the Security Council and intervention mechanisms aside for just one minute, do you still consider UN insignificant and inefficient? Or are you just not interested or do not know enough about all the other UN mechanisms? Just want to straighten out what are we talking about here exactly. UN to me is not just peace-making, there is a whole vast world other than that in the UN.

OSCE = Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a regional mechanism oriented on economic, cultural, and political cooperation, extremely efficient, because unlike UN, EU, even CoE, it is based on quick political decisions, with very little administrative hassles. The administrative staff itself is kept to a minimum. Thus, for example, if an individual claimant files a human right complaint, he/she will receive an answer within 10 days (UN takes 1 year, CoE mechanism of the COurt of Human Rights can take up to 5-8 years. Same for most international regional HR organizations). OSCE obligations are highly regarded by member states, they report on their fulfillments annually on meetings in Vienna. Reports are made publicly and are accompanied by 'shadow reports' of non-governmental organizations. I don't know of any single case when OSCE commitments would be blatantly broken or unobserved and states go out of their way to mend their reputation if they overstep. That's how it works in a community of interdependent states that need to cooperate. It would just be wonderful if the states would observe their commitments to the UN in similar fashion.

The military interventions are always just one small part of the entire peace-making/peace-keeping missions. Thus while NATO forces may have been crucial in Kosovo, it is the OSCE-affiliated people, thousands of them, that keep the show running to this day, working via training, help in establishing non-governmental organization, help in re-settlement, counselling, observing election, re-building basic infrastructure, and on and on and on. That's who 'those' OSCE people are.

dagmaraka
Yes the UN is involved in things other than peace keeping. However, if it cannot keep the peace which I believe was it's main purpose in life IMO it is not a functioning relevant organization. It was established at the end of WW2 for that purpose.

As for the OSCE never heard of it . The US got involved in the Serbian situation thru it's membership in NATO.

Yup, I know that. As I just explained, NATO played crucial, but relatively short-termed, role in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was OSCE guys and affiliated organizations (International Helsinki Federation, Minority Rights Group International,...) that did most of the rebuiling, monitoring support work after that. For years and years and years. And for OSCE, well, what can I say. The fact that you have never heard of it does not diminish its role or importance. It is a European regional mechanism, thus it does not have much to do with the U.S., and it won't make headlines in this country on a daily basis. But in Europe it sure does.
UN - Security Council does not work as is right now, I'll give you that. The rest of it I hold in much respect and I don't expect their work will be significantly damaged by current war. They'll just have a lot more work. I happened to work in UNHCR in the past, during the Bosnia-Herzegovina civil war. It was an amazing experience and the folks there are doing admirable work, and a ton of it, too. Anyway, if you refuse to look at UN in a hollistic sense, our discussion on this topic is unnecessary. For 'you talk about the goat, I about the boat' (an old slovak saying). Peacekeeping was originally the main task of the UN and still is important, but things have evolved a bit since then. Even the founding principles do get interpreted differently (millenial summit sums up the developments). Just like the US Constitution, what do they call it, fluid constitution (something else, but somebody here will surely know)? some sort of such thing. setting out only principles, but they get and should get interpreted (such was the original intention) within the framework of the ever-changing social reality. And international social reality did change a lot in that half a century, did it not?

Anyhoo, that's all folks for today, I am defending my dissertation proposal tomorrow, must get ready. Think of me at 3pm!

nimh,

Thanks so much for the information on the Kurds and kissinger.
In the midst of the postings on this thread, for the life of me,
I would never would never have guessed it was about French Humour.
Saylavie.


dagmaraka,

Good luck on defending your dissertation proposal.
Think of the process as being like a hazing to get into
a fraternity.

didnt think of you at 3 cause i hadnt seen this post, but i did just now ... ;-) ... how did it go defending your dissertation proposal? what is your proposal about?

also, i was going to respond to au a bit about the osce - in particular i'd wanted to write something about the role the helsinki summit played back in '75 and what it did for enforcing some basics on human rights in eastern europe - and then i realised how little i actually remembered about that all ('s been a while ...) - not enough to properly write about it, anyway. but i suspect you might be able to ... ?

dagmaraka
The UN at work.

Judging Human Rights

Those who say the United Nations has outlived its utility could easily point to this year's session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which opened March 17 in Geneva.
Founded in 1946, the commission investigates and reports on a range of human rights issues, from freedom of religion, speech, and the press to problems like torture, executions, and access to food and education. Since no nation likes UN criticism, some in the past have made at least token gestures to try to ward off censure. China, for example, has signed UN rights treaties, released a few political prisoners, and invited UN rights experts to visit.
In recent years, however, violators have adopted a new tack to prevent criticism. Nations with terrible human rights records seek membership so they can work to prevent the body from issuing resolutions condemning them. Human Rights Watch, a private monitoring group, claims that about two dozen of the 53 current members are there simply to frustrate the commission's work.
The situation reached rock bottom last year, when the US couldn't even get elected to a seat - although it's back now. This year's commission finds such human rights-abusers as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe sitting as members. Even more deplorable, the chairwoman is Libya's ambassador to the UN in Geneva.
If a nation can't kill a resolution, it may work behind the scenes to promote one that grossly understates the seriousness of violations. For example, Arab militia groups from northern Sudan routinely seize hundreds of black African women and children from the south and sell them into physical and sexual slavery. Yet commission resolutions condemning the government's failure to stop the slave raids are frequently watered down to censure mere "abductions."
To prevent the session from becoming an annual charade, the UN should adopt standards as to who can and cannot be a commission member. Drafting such rules will be a delicate task. But the commission's future credibility - along with that of the UN itself - depends on it.

AU - interesting article, who wrote it and where was it published?
It IS very perillous to work within the UN, I have been to the meetings of the Working Group on Minorities while I worked at the Slovak Helsinki Committee (branch of International Helsinki Federation, monitoring the Helsinki Final Act implementation), that meets under the Commission. And the article is right to some extent that many delegations focus on obstructing the work of the commission. However it grossly oversimplifies the situation. In this manner you could dismiss the work of any organization, no matter what they do or on what level. THe Commission has also dealt, successfully, with hundreds and thousands of human rights violations. It does take a long time, it is excessively bureaucratic and there is much space for development, but that does not prove that the COmmission is non-functional or haven't done a thing.
One objection though against the article: the US couldn't get elected not because the Commission was malfunctioning. It was a political sanction, an official protest against domestic US policies. I don't know the author of the article, but the Commission's position was widely publicized and accessible, which sort of undermines the credibility of the article. But i would agree with parts of it.

OSCE, started in 1975 as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Its main goal at the time was to bring the countries of East and West to one round-table to start discussions on a less tense coexistence. Many date the beginning of 'detente' rightly to this conference. The Soviet Union and its satellites participated on debating the four 'baskets' of cooperation - security, economy, culture and a separate basket for human rights (the ten guiding principles) that had revolutionary consequences for the Eastern Europe and were the beginning of the end of communism. Remember that the UN International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights came into its implementation period in 1976 as well, thus the dissent had two tangible international documents to work with, both ratified by the communist states. Solidarnosc demanded their observance, and the Charter 77 was created on the 1st January of 1977, whose purpose was to force Czechoslovak government to abide by the covenants it signed. My father was one of the founding members, it was a fascinating period of time. But OSCE continued to play crucial role in Europe even after the Revolutions of 1989, precisely for its structure. Since it operates in top political levels without much bureaucracy at place, it works fast, very very fast and is highly regarded by all members - as in Europe we are interdependent and cannot step on each others toes without feeling the consequences. The office I regard most highly is the High Commissioner for Minorities, that was Max van der Stoel for years (not sure who replaced him after his 2 terms in office) and who has done absolutely incredible amounts of work in Eastern EUrope, especially regarding the Roma and Sinti. But, there is an official web that includes the history and all sections of OSCE, (www.osce.org).

Thanks for your thoughts, the proposal is now official!! It is on 'ethnification' of political systems in Central Europe: it will deal with historical memory and how it gets used/manipulated in present politics. i am quite excited to get to the writing stage!

Dagmaraka
Commentary from the Christian Science Monitor
March 25, 2003 edition

Interesting. That is a good paper, I would expect them to have their facts together, even in a commentary. I will get a copy, and if this is the only article on the topic, send them a feedback. Thanks for posting it.

The French has a sense of humour? Don't make me laugh. c.i.

Dagmaraka
This is an article on the same basic subject.
http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may032503.asp