irateplatypus

thanks mirevolver, you beat me to it.

of course it's my bottomline: could it be anyone elses?

it seems you're trying to ride both sides of the fence... on one hand you attempt to refute any criticisms of the UN, yet also maintain that it is much in need of reforming. in what ways would you reform it?

if those reforms you propose are much needed and fundamental... i'm not sure we disagree at all except that you seem married to the idea that the UN is the institution of choice for international coordination while i'm not convinced their record merits that confidence.

things i would do to reform the UN:
1) establish criteria where the united nations MUST act in a humanitarian situation. if there is blatant genocide (rwanda) or an extreme humanitarian crisis (somalia) then the UN must intervene. i make no judgement as to how stringent those guidelines should be but, as it stands, the UN demagogues humanitarian issues while avoiding the circumstances that are not politically expedient.

2) abolish all notion of international courts.

3) provide complete fiscal and bookkeeping transparency in ALL matters. the United Nations operates under pledged money and kept afloat by taxpayers around the world. it needs to be completely accountable for every dime it spends. we should know how much the secretary general takes home in pay, we should know their budget for pencil lead.

4) recognize that if the United States is going to be the one to front the money and military backing to UN actions... the US should be given special consideration in diplomatic negotiations. if they want the US to come to the table on equal footing (and i think that it should) then be prepared to pony up the funds and manpower. you will not use our troops who swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States to bear an unequal burden in peacekeeping or military action.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

Mephisto2

I want to respond to these constructive comments, but I've got a plane to catch!

I'll follow up tomorrow.

And, accepting something isn't perfect is not sitting on the fence! Nothing is perfect in this world.


Mr Mephisto

Manx

The United States is nothing more than the joint composition of 50 independant states, an umbrella acting as a sovereign nation. The US exists as 50 individual states, each occupying a physical place outlined by borders. The U.S. partially governs the land those states occupy by virtue of mutual benefit.

The US is just a national forum for representatives of the states to meet and talk. It has no sovereignty over the group of 50 states outside of the sovereignty assigned to it by those 50 states. There is no physical area outlined by borders, outside the 50 states that comprise it, that define it as a national state. It is simply the end result of a few documents put together.

Apples to apples.

mirevolver

The citizens of the United States are simply that. Citizens of the United States, not citizens of Arizona, California, New York or any other state. The States are not soverign entities. They may have the power to make their own laws and set their own internal policy, but they cannot create laws or policies that override the laws set forth by the Federal Government of the United States. The states also have no athourity to handle foreign affairs. Arizona cannot sign a treaty with Mexico, New York cannot sign a treaty with Canada. States also do not have the power to enter into agreements with other states.

The members of the UN are sovereign entities. People who are citizens of countries that are members of the UN are not citizens of the UN, they are citizens of the United States, Germany, France. The members of the UN have the power to make their own laws, but the UN does not have the power to make laws for the member nations. Member nations also have the power to engage in foreign affairs and sign treaties on their own with both member and nonmember nations.


Perhaps you should read the US constitution.

The US Congress has the power to set the rules and regulations regarding terrority within the jurisdiction of the United States. This means that the land of any state is Unites States land and that gives the United States a physical area outlined by borders.

If you want to compare apples to apples, compare the UN to NATO or compare the US to the German Bundesrepublic. But don't compare the US to the UN.

__________________
Aside from my great plans to become the future dictator of the moon, I have little interest in political discussions.

roachboy

lebell: i'll look at the report you linked when i ahve more time--i am suspcious up front, however, as a function of it coming from cato, yet another in the network fo rightwing thinktanks to which we owe all manner of pseudo-research. but i will check it out.

the point about the migration of this politics from the birchers to the right mainstream remains. and the right thinks it is the left that has moved. which is the funny thing.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

martinguerre

mire...i claim rights as a minnesotan that i couldn't get many other places. the constitution of my state is different than every other states, and will offer different rights and responsibilities.

__________________
For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life.

-John 3:16

Manx

Everyone is a citizen of the state in which they reside.

The rules defined by the Federal Gov't would not exist without the representatives of the States enacting them. There is only a Federal Gov't out of mutual agreement of the member states. There is only a U.N. out of mutual agreement of the member states.
That's all well and good. But since the claim is that the U.N. is ineffective because it is not perfect, the comparison of the U.S. to the U.N. is apt.

Both are democratic environments. That is the comparison - not the minutia of their differing methods of organization. The U.S. is nothing without its members, and the U.N. is nothing with its members.

mirevolver

And I claim rights as an Arizonan. Arizona has it's own constitution. But that does not make me a citizen of Arizona. I am a citizen of the United States, my passport has the seal of the United States, and not the State seal of Arizona. Both Minnesota and Arizona, as well as the other 48 states do not have the power to override the laws set fourth by the US congress.

The land defined by borders as Minnesota belongs to Minnesota, but it also belongs to the United States. Minnesota cannot secede from the United States because the United States has claim over Minnesota. There are also 48 other states that cannot secede (Texas is the exception as they were once their own country).

When was the last time you drove on an Interstate highway? That was a road that belongs to the US and not the state you were in while driving on that road.

__________________
Aside from my great plans to become the future dictator of the moon, I have little interest in political discussions.

mirevolver

The UN cannot lay claim over its members. The US can lay claim over the states, therefore the states make up the physical region of the United States. The UN member nations do not make up a physical region of the UN. Claiming that the breakup of the UN would be the same as a breakup of the US is just as absurd as saying that the breakup of NATO would be the same as the breakup of the German Bundesländer.

__________________
Aside from my great plans to become the future dictator of the moon, I have little interest in political discussions.

Manx

As I said, you are a citizen of Arizona. Look at your drivers license. And look up the definition of the term citizen.

There is no Federal Gov't other than that defined by the States which comprise it. This should be obvious. Any state can secede from the United States, as long as the 14th Amendment is ceither repealed or in some fashion, changed - which would only take a Constitutional Amendment, which is implemented by agreement of 2/3rds of the representatives of the States (or 3/4ths of the legislatures of the States).

I.E. there is no Federal Gov't without the States. Just as there is no U.N. without the states.

The U.S. does not lay claim over anything. The U.S. only "lays claim" to exactly as much as the States allow it to "lay claim". If the States decide that the U.S. should not be allowed to establish a national law, the States can prevent it. Same thing with the U.N.

You're not going to succeed in establishing a credible and significant difference between the democratic functions of the U.S. and the U.N. They simply operate on different scales.

mirevolver

You are in disagreement with Article I, Section 8, clause 18 of the Constitution.
and the tenth amendment...
The federal government operates at a level above the states and first say regarding laws, then whatever the federal government does not make laws on is delegated to the states.

I will however cede the point of citizenship as amendment 14 clearly says that citizens are citizens of both the state they reside in as well as citizens of the United States. However there is still a fundimental difference between that and the UN. In the case of the US, I am a citizen of Arizona and of the US. But with the UN, I am a citizen of the US, but not a citizen of the UN.

This sets the US as a sovereign entity made up of people who are citizens of the US. The UN however is not a sovereign entity and has no governance of those involved in the UN. Those involved in the UN are there on a strictly volunteer basis.

__________________
Aside from my great plans to become the future dictator of the moon, I have little interest in political discussions.

Publius

For my two-cents I would first like to compliment Mr Mephisto on a job well done so far in defense of the U.N. Bravo.

To all you UN haters our there I would like to ask you, what has the UN done for you today? Can’t think of anything? Maybe that the problem and why much of the neo-con right are UN haters (Something to do with the idea that if we pay money in we should be getting something back ... hmm isn’t this their same argument against many of the social welfare programs? but I digress).

I always have to laugh to myself when I see UN haters talk out of both sides of their mouth. First, they want the UN to be a strong body capable of rushing into any country (Rwanda, Cosivo, Samolia, etc) the end hostilities and provide effective humanitarian aid. Then, often in the very next breath, they whine and complain how UN policies infringe upon state sovereignty (am I the only one who sees the contradiction here?) Listen people, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either states have sovereignty or they don’t. If they do, then any international relief agency (whether run by the UN or not) will have to work within the bounds placed upon them by states. And if they don’t, then open the boarders and strengthen the power of the UN to fulfill the role of a world governing body (something UN haters are adamantly against and yet arguing for in the same breath).

Secondly, I would like to ask all you UN haters out there how much you have really researched this issue and do you really know how the UN operates or are you just blindly repeating rhetoric that you have been feed? Many of you might be surprised to learn that nearly all UN resolution are passed by the unanimous consent of the participating countries (whether the body be the Security Council or the General Assembly), that no country is “forced” to participate in any UN backed program (possibly due to state sovereignty?), that no UN body enters into a country unless expressly invited to do so (again due to state sovereignty) with the only exception being in situations such as Iraq (1) where a country has violated the sovereign right of another or broken international law in such an egregious manner as to bring down the wrath of the global community.

I would challenge everyone (both supporters and haters) to learn more about the UN and its many programs. I personally have had the great fortune to work (albeit briefly) with 2 UN aid programs, UNESCO and UNHCR. It is an amazing experience to be in a room with people from countries all over the world, work together with these people to draft resolutions dealing with global problems, and see these resolutions come to pass by the unanimous consent of the entire body (it is also very humbling to see your hard work come to not and fail miserably because you or your partner countries attempted to push your agenda without gaining the consent of others). I have had the privilege of sitting in the Great Hall in New York during a final session of the General Assembly. This is one of the most awe inspiring moments of my life watching 198 countries and hundreds of NGO’s work together in an attempt to better all of humanity.

Lastly, for all you isolationists out there its time to wake up and smell the hummus. Deny it all you will, we are living in a global community (have been for some time). Actions that we take overseas do have effects here (and visa-versa). I had hoped that people would learn this truth after 9/11 but sadly many have not. And before you go thinking that I am some California globalist hippie, your might be surprised to learn that I was raised in a very rural community in the mid-west (Kansas if you must know). I fully understand how easy it is to buy into the isolationist rhetoric because most of us here in the US are so far removed from world events that it is difficult to see the connection between us and them. It is time for people in the US to wake up and embrace the fact that we are the worlds greatest leader. It is long past time for the US to start leading by example instead of pushing our considerable weight around like a spoiled schoolyard bully. A body is no greater then its parts, and when its greatest part (the US) is ineffectively in fulfilling its role then the entire body will suffer as a result.

Manx

No I'm not.

You are a citizen of the World. You are also a citizen of a nation that is part of the U.N. The laws of the U.N. apply to you.

And the U.N. is a sovereign entity made up of the people who are citizens of the nations which comprise the U.N. That's why we have things like U.N. sanctions, International Law, etc.
The U.N. does have governance over those involved in the U.N.
Those involved in the United States are on a strictly volunteer basis - all they have to do is amend the constitution.

Again, and for the last time - there is no significant difference between the U.S. and the U.N. other than scope. Why? Because both organizations are based on democratic principles. Therefore, to state that the U.N. should be disbanded because "in some areas (emergency humanitarian aid, third world assistance, economy of resources, fiscal transparency) failures are clearly observable" where the same thing is equally true for the U.S. is to hold those organizations to different standards without cause.

I'm not going to repeat myself yet again, so I'm done with this conversation.

Mojo_PeiPei

The UN has zero, zilch, nada, rip sovereignity or authority. The only power the UN has is where it's conceded.

__________________
To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

Lebell

This issue was effectively settled in 1865.

The states cannot succeed at whim.

And to claim the UN is equivalent to the US in scope is like saying that the sky is red...just because you say so doesn't change the fact that it's not.

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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Manx

That's probably why I said exactly the opposite.

Manx

This is true of anyone/group who holds power. Including the Federal Gov't.


In general, my impression of the extreme dislike of the U.N. effectively comes down to two things:

1- It's a simple meme.
2- The people that feel this way (who are not simply repeating the meme) have a desire to see the U.S. rule the world. The U.N. is a fundamental block to that goal because the U.N. is based on democratic principles, which obviously conflict with a dictatorial U.S. rule of the world.

mirevolver

If I were truely a citizen of the world, I should be able to carry a passport that lets me travel to any country I choose to go to. Yet I don't, instead I have a US passport that can get me to many places, and many more when used with a visa, but there are still places I cannot go, like Cuba. And honsetly, if I ever did find out I was legally a citizen of the UN, I would renounce that citizenship immeaditly. As for the laws of the UN do not apply to me because I am a citizen of the United States, and the US Constitution clearly states that it is the supreme law of the land and supercedes all treaties with foreign bodies. The UN is a foreign body. Now in cases where there is no conflict between US and UN law, this goes unnoticed but it is still the US law that applies to me. In cases where US and UN law are in disagreement, the US law overrides the UN law.

Tell that to the people of Bingham, NM who have passed a law declaring their town a UN-free zone. Besides if they truely do have governance, then I will make this point. Kofi Annan has declared the US to be a rouge state and that our involvement in Iraq is illegal, but what has the UN done in response if that is the case? The answer: Nothing. The UN knows it has no power over the US, otherwise they would have sanctions on us by now. Instead all they can do is say, "Please listen to us. And if you don't, we'll ask again."

Thank you.

__________________
Aside from my great plans to become the future dictator of the moon, I have little interest in political discussions.

Manx

Now remind me how ability to enforce rules means it is acceptable to fail in emergency humanitarian aid, third world assistance, economy of resources and fiscal transparency - but a lack of ability to enforce rules means those failures should rightly result in disbandment.

If anything, the exact opposite would be true.

mirevolver

Welcome to the UN, where no good deed goes unpunished, but the bad deeds are ok.

__________________
Aside from my great plans to become the future dictator of the moon, I have little interest in political discussions.

joeshoe

Meh, I think the UN is an wholly undemocratic organization that's self-aggrandizing. Maybe it's ok as a forum, but when it tries to force its will, then it's out of its place.

Tarl Cabot

So what do you think of this?

"Kofi Annan ordered United Nations flags at half-staff yesterday in tribute
to lately departed Palestinian supremo Yasser Arafat. . . . Say what you
will about Mr. Annan's decision, it is certainly true that for 30 years the
U.N. did what it could to elevate Arafat from terrorist to statesman. That's
something Americans might bear in mind when next told the war on
terror must be conducted under U.N. auspices."

- Wall Street Journal, 11/12/04

joemc91

Just thought I should add probably one of the most important UN organizations to the list.
ICAO: The international civil aviation organization. If it weren't for them, any international travel would be seriously messed up. This is one of the only ways we can gauruntee that an airline out of Europe you fly is as safe as the one you fly out of the US. ICAO runs the NAT system that all airliners from the US to Europe use as well as the PAC tracks and polar routes that the airlines use. The rules also gauruntee that a new airliner built today conforms with the same safety standards that Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, and Embraer abide by. It also helps countries negotiate airspace use agreements including the Open Skies treaty we have with Canada as well as ones between the US and pretty much all other countries in the world.
I would say the the UN's major successes are really not often paid attention to because they do what they're supposed to. Just my $0.02.

__________________
I prefer desert wines to dessert wines.

Dry and red

Tarl Cabot

There you have it. The US is dictatorial (to the rest of the peace-loving world), but apparently not to its citizens.

Let's have some history:

After World War I, Woodrow Wilson had proposed 14 Points that would [theoretically] assure world peace. He naively assumed that all the countries of the world would simply be nice to each other. He doggedly supported a League of Nations, a cooperative effort among the nations of the world to live in peace with each other. (sure-Hitler,Tojo) He had redrawn the map of the world: essentially all of Europe, ½ of Africa, and ¼ of Asia.

Related information: The Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank, had been formally chartered in 1922. It was designed by British and American idealists as the way to create an ideal world-and it still dominates U. S. foreign policy. The last eight Secretaries of State have been members, and the Clinton administration included over 50 members in upper levels of government, military, and industry. The entire CFR philosophy rests on the same false view that men are all peaceful.

After World War II, we had been brought full circle from the failure of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations back to the same starting point.

The United Nations was the result of planning that began in 1942. George Marshall, Franklin Roosevelt, and others planned for a post-war New World Order. This new cooperative world network would be led by the super-powers, the U.K., the U.S., and the USSR. Together they would redesign the world so that there would be no national sovereignty-all nations could hold each other accountable and exercise their authority within individual nations. In other words, nations wouldn't rule themselves; there would be world oversight. (What kind of "oversight" do you think Stalin had in mind?)

The basic model, then, for avoiding all future wars was-of all things-the League of Nations. Upon the same utopian premise, Roosevelt added his four essential freedoms:

" Freedom of speech
" Freedom of worship
" Freedom from want
" Freedom from fear

On June 26, 1945, representatives from 50 nations met in San Francisco and signed the charter bringing the United Nations Organization into official existence. The United Nations was intended to be the government that would create the New World Order. Significantly, the Soviet Union demanded and got three votes. Though it was well-known that Ukraine and Belarus were under Soviet control, the USSR claimed that they were "separate nations." The USSR had actually demanded six votes, but it was decided that Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were not separate nations.

To understand the true nature of the UN, we have only to look at one man, the first Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Alger Hiss was an important official of the State Department during and immediately after World War II. He had been advisor to Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference with Stalin and Churchill, and played a leading role in the development of the UN. He had friends in high places, was good looking, and had risen high in government ranks. In 1946, as a result of a persistent investigation by young California congressman Richard Nixon, he was exposed as a Communist spy. A good man to start a world peace organization.

The second Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, was nominated by the Soviets. He was the founder of the Communist Party in Norway, and remained a committed socialist throughout his life. Under his leadership, Stalin continued to take over Eastern Europe unchallenged, while Lie condemned right-wing dictatorships in Latin America.

The third Secretary-General was Dag Hammerskjold, a Swedish Communist, elected in 1953. Instead of protesting the continuing Soviet aggression, he focused his efforts on apartheid in South Africa and Rhodesia. He said nothing when the white minority in Rhodesia was slaughtered under a Communist dictatorship.

Hammerskjold died in a plane crash in 1961, but his successor, Secretary-General U Thant, founder of the Burmese Communist Party, said nothing when Czechoslovakian riots were crushed by Soviet tanks in 1968. Instead, he condemned French and American methods of dealing with student protests and Vietnam protestors.

Under U Thant, 18 separate agencies of the UN were built-a huge bureaucracy of international agencies that had created a series of treaties and resolves giving the UN authority over United States spheres. Our national parks are now "international biosphere zones," controlled by the UN. In addition, there are the World Health Organization, which tells people how many children they can have, International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and numerous environmental agencies that regulate primarily the United States. All this is imposed on us by an unelected government with a global base-and we pay 25% of its budget.

In 1972, Kurt Waldheim became Secretary-General. This man was a Nazi war criminal. He condemned the United States actions in Vietnam and Israel's 1973 Yom Kippur War, but was silent when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

In 1982, Secretary-General J. Perez Cuellor condemned right-wing governments in Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru, while bolstering Castro's Communist regime in Cuba.

Boutros-Boutros Ghali became Secretary-General in 1992. He was an Egyptian Moslem and a founder of the Baathist party (now famous due to Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime). Ghali brought pressure to bear in the Middle East and in Moslem conflicts in Bosnia, Serbia, etc. While he was its leader, the UN funded China's one child/family policy, but had nothing to say about Tiananmen Square. Africa suffered under Marxist dictators (Somalia, Ethiopia) while the UN stood idly by.

Under a banner of peacekeeping, the UN has meddled in the social and medical affairs of the nations of the world. Said to be "man's last, best hope for peace," it has botched everything it has done. The Soviet invasions of Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1978) have gone uncontested. No peacekeepers were deemed necessary. It has sent peacekeepers into Bosnia, Lebanon, and Somalia, among other places. So, after their wonderful and effective work, would you plan a vacation at any of those places?

The UN's charter proclaims its purpose to be the saving of the world for peace (see Communist definition of "peace"). Instead of sending humanitarian aid, arbitrating cease-fires, or enforcing détente, it has spent 90% of its budget on meddling. In 1992, of $7.8 million spent, only 10% went to peacekeeping. Its vision of the world is one of peace through imposing bureaucracy and a smothering coercion. It has consistently and insistently attacked Western nations-Christian ones-as heretical. It aims to destroy everything that Western Christendom has stood for.

The United States won the war for the world, then paved the way for Communist tyranny through well-intended but foolish philosophies. We've seen its "effectiveness" as the war with Iraq loomed. The UN tried to deny America's sovereign right to respond to the attack on us by terrorists, while allowing Saddam Hussein 12 years to build up his war arsenal, oppress and murder his own people, and to support the terrorism that plagues the world.

Khofi Annan, meanwhile, was perfectly happy to leave Saddam alone, as long as his son raked in profits from the oil-for-food scandal.

To review:

1. Roosevelt declared that all men had four essential freedoms: freedom of speech and worship, and freedom from want and fear. Government can and certainly should protect the first two freedoms, but it cannot and should not try to guarantee the other two. In relieving want, it must take from those who have to provide for those who do not have (legal plunder), and no human being or government can free people from fear.

2. The United Nations was built on the faulty [utopian] premise that all the people of the world wanted peace and that all should draw together behind this goal.

Backers of the United Nations falsely assumed that Communists shared common ground and common goals with non-communist countries. Nations that intend to dominate the entire world can hardly be sharing common ground with nations that wish to be free.

In the ideology of communism, world peace is unchallenged world communism.

3. Most of the UN member nations are busy trying to steal as much from us as they can, under the guise of "world peace."

So there's my "simple" reason for disliking the UN.

Lebell

Excellent post, Tarl Cabot. I knew bits and pieces of it, but that was a good executive summary.

The UN is great in principle, but the disproportionate dues/vote ratio makes for a situation where the have nots can safely bleed the haves. This after years of it being used as a stage to fight the cold war, with the Soviet Union using its extra "votes" to sabotage the US.

Interesting that this is still played out today with the UN regularly passing resolutions condemning Israel and not simularly condemning Palestinian suicide bombings.

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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Manx

Nonsense and nonsense.

Both Tarl Cabot and Lebell's posts are based on the opinion that the have nots are stealing from the haves.

Unfortunately for their opinions, that theft doesn't even begin to balance the theft enacted by the haves on the have nots in the form of global capitalism.

Tarl Cabot's other opinon, that the U.S. desires world freedom, is disproved by the history of U.S. foreign policy, particularly post-WWII.

The U.S. desires self-preservation. And today, that self-preservation includes the stability of its position as the single super power afforded the rights to police the world as it sees fit. World freedom would be detrimental to the U.S. economy.

Suave

It is though. Non-humanitarian aid is essentially a new form of colonialism. Third world countries are forever paying off loans with rising interest rates, and taking out more loans to pay off current loans, etc. with no end in sight. Most aid between countries and from large organizations (World Bank, IMF) is not good for the country receiving it. There is good aid though, through organizations such as UNICEF, The Red Cross, and hundreds or even thousands of smaller NGOs, but "aid" generally helps the donor country more than the recipient.

Lebell

So you acknowledge the theft but justify it by saying that one justifies the other?

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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alansmithee

Then how did the US (or any other country) survive before the UN? There were agreements before the UN about international trade, and undoubtedly there would be agreements after the UN.

As opposed to losing your job to outsorcing to another country? Again, any agreement could be better accomplished through agreements between individual countries (or economic partnerships, such as the EU). It might even lead to MORE IT jobs in the US, as the global operations would have to be scaled back, leaving it more economically feasible to have IT jobs stay in the US.

The successes of this body are too numerous to mention . Otherwise, my bootleg Hong Kong DVD's might be $2 per instead of $3 per. Even today, copyright law is only enforced to the extent that a particular country desires to enforce it.

Again, countries survived before the UN. There was interaction before. I think that although the UN might have started as a good idea, it has degraded to a form of welfare for developing nations. It makes sense for alot of countries to support the UN, but the US is not one of them. And with the current state of most European economies, it is probably not beneficial for them either. And as for a supposed duty to the world, that should be left up to the decicion of private entities, not forced upon whole nations.

Super Model

A huge task I may add. But hey, what will happen to the great USA, if all the countries take out their gold reserves from US, and say put it in a swiss bank? What will that do the prised dollar? What will happen to the top 10 banks in US that hold the pention fund money of the UN, or the procurment funds of the UN?
History tells us that there is always a decline of the hegimon.
As to police the world as one superpower sees fit, that is still to be seen. After all we are all different people, and the world is different. Some countries stive to the western goods in form of Coca Cola or McDonnalds, others tend to go without it. Respect that is what USA lacks these days.

almostaugust

Nice above post Publius. Some good discussion here.

__________________
'And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass'

alansmithee

If countries take their gold reserves from the US and put it in a Swiss bank, nothing will happen to the dollar. The US has been off the gold standard for approx. 80 years.

roachboy

i have to say that tarl's post above is appalling.

that poverty is somehow normal, somehow acceptable, is not only ethically regunant but is also not good business because it builds an element of social instability into the heart of capitalism--and capitalism, for all the ideology of freedom that floats with it, in the same huge white porcelain bowl, requires social stability to operate. even as the system itself undermines it.

the idea that the redistriubtion of wealth is legal plunder is absurd. so absurd that it is difficult to know where to start to demonstrate its absurdity. maybe it makes sense in the manly fantasies informed by hack writers on the order of ayn rand, but nowhere else.

the whole communism thing is straight from the john birch society. i remain amazed that this outdated tripe has attained any currency for anyone. even if you stick with the relatively expansive assumptions about conservative credulity, it still is amazing.

world peace=world communism?
i do not know what you are talking about.

the funny thing in that is that it is the capitalist order that is interested in global domination, operating behind the figleaf of formal freedom.
just look around at the empirical world
get your head out of far right redbaiting nonsense from the middle 1950s.

from here, what manx said i would echo.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Suave

Poverty is normal in a capitalist society. You can't have rich people without poor people. No matter what you do, as long as you currently live within this type of economy, there WILL BE POOR PEOPLE.

It is essentially plunder though. The countries who have the power to bargain from a favoured position gain much more from their trade relationships than do the weaker countries. I defy you to show me how multinationals based out of the US and the US itself are gaining equally from trade agreements with, for example, any Latin American country.

I have absolutely no idea what the point of this paragraph was, but I shall attempt to mirror it:
The whole capitalism thing is straight from PABAAH. I remain amazed that this outdated tripe has attained any currency for anyone. Even if you stick with the relatively expansive assumptions about liberal credulity, it is still amazing.

Tarl Cabot

I find the above long on emotional rhetoric, and short on facts and logic. However, I particularly enjoyed these:

" maybe it makes sense in the manly fantasies informed by hack writers on the order of ayn rand"

"the whole communism thing is straight from the john birch society."

"i remain amazed that this outdated tripe has attained any currency for anyone."

"get your head out of far right redbaiting nonsense from the middle 1950s."

In spite of the middling length of your diatribe, you neglected to mention:

1. The basis for what you think is your (okay, anyone's) right to confiscate wealth from others. That concept was anathema to the founding fathers.

2. The income level which should trigger wealth confiscation by the government. When I can pin a socialist down on this subject, the answer tends to be anything greater than their income level. However, most of them simply duck the question.

3. How capitalism has survived without your guidance, if it's as fragile as you say.

4. If a person is automatically entitled to receive enough largesse to live wherever they want. Worded another way, is a jobless person in southern California entitled to enough money from other people to remain there, or would it be acceptable to provide enough money for a two-bedroom apartment in southern Mississippi?

Oh, one more thing:

Let's take a hypothetical. A child is born on a Florida farm, the seventh of fourteen children. No phone. No electricity. He plows fields behind a mule. His shirts are made from flour sacks.

After he graduates from high school, he goes back to work on his parents' farm, but for no pay.

How much government assistance (i.e. other people's money) should we start giving him?

roachboy

i suppose there is an alternate dimension in which that would be understood as witty, suave, but whatever....read the end of tarl's rant and you will see what i am responding to at least.

the redistribution of wealth (legal plunder in your terminology) was an adaptation to modern warfare and the requirements that put on nation-states.
it also was central to funding the entire infrastructure that neo-liberal ideology likes to exclude from its "thinking" about capitalism.
income taxations was in significant measure a response to systematic inequities generated by capitalism that far outstripped the ability of "private charities" to address and that formed a basis for political threats to the system by the early 20th century...but i suppose that these adaptations are something that you oppose, as you seem to imagine that inequities in wealth are normal and that basic freedoms only really apply to the holders of capital.


but you should at least keep in mind that yours is not the only interpretation of basic freedoms and that other understandings have been at the basis for the instituting of other forms of capitalism that have proven to be less barbaric than the american model over the course of this century.
now you have had a conservative political offensive against the other forms, and the only coherent result of it so far has been to demonstrate that the only reason more equitable variants of capitalism have emerged is out of political fear of a threat from the left.

you should maybe recall that one of the main reasons for setting up not just the un but bretton woods, the imf, nato seato, etc. were as various reactions to fascism. the understanding that motivated them was that poverty, exacerbated by problems of currency, were the causes of fascism. all these mechanisms were set up to provide transnational sources of stabilization to nation states. maybe that is what makes them all "communist"? because in trying to do other things that might make the international distrubtion of wealth a little more equitable--in the case of the un--it messes with the natural order?

sounds like ned beatty's speech in the film "network" without the satire part.

i do not understand what point you were trying to make in the second part of your last post. best i can figure it, what you are saying is a tautology. more economically powerful countries exploit their power acorss bilateral arrangements with less economically powerful ones. well obviously. but following the logic of the first part of your post, i would imagine that you would think this too is part of the "natural order" of things.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

roachboy

tarl: what the founding fathers did not imagine as necessary in the late 1700s--in the context of a largely agrarian economy--makes no difference whatsoever in the 21st century. even during the period when tocqueville was researching "democracy in america"--the late 1830s--the agrarian model for the american economy was not really dominant--capitalism was taking shape in the cities--the civil war pretty much determined which general mode of economic activity would dominate in the states. so the world jefferson wrote about is long gone, tarl. it does not matter what they found horrifying--their was a different place.

not interested in the second point, as what i have to say on the matter is either in the post above or here.

on your third "point"---capitalism has a history, tarl. you could read about it.
then maybe we could have an interesting conversation. right now, this is nonsense.

on your john birch society views of the un--read the last part of the longer post above...around the "world peace=world communism" bit.


the rest of your post--your "examples"---operate on assumptions that are absurd, so there is no way to respond.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Tarl Cabot

One that had no poor people?


I took a college course on US History since 1865, so I consider myself educated on the subject, your opinion notwithstanding.

I've read it. And if you don't want your opinions to be referred to as "Karl Marx views," you might want to knock off the "john birch" references.


I'm unaware of any "examples," with the possible exception of the hypothetical I posted. I also notice that you suggest reading for me, but you apparently missed my questions. So I'll repeat them here:

1. What is the basis for what you think is your (okay, anyone's) right to confiscate wealth from others?

2. What is the income level which should trigger wealth confiscation by the government?

3. How has capitalism survived without your guidance, if it's as fragile as you say? Okay, you probably think you answered that one. Free pass.

4. Is a person automatically entitled to receive enough largesse to live wherever they want? Worded another way, is a jobless person in southern California entitled to enough money from other people to remain there, or would it be acceptable to provide enough money for a two-bedroom apartment in southern Mississippi? (Hint: That means the recipient might have to move if he wants to receive free shelter.)

Oh, one more thing:

Let's take a hypothetical. A child is born on a Florida farm, the seventh of fourteen children. No phone. No electricity. He plows fields behind a mule. His shirts are made from flour sacks.

After he graduates from high school, he goes back to work on his parents' farm, but for no pay.

How much government assistance (i.e. other people's money) should we start giving him?

roachboy

yours is a completely ahistorical viewpoint.
not interested in debating this type of question with you any further.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Manx

Obviously not. The world is not a perfect place. If you hate the UN and call for its dissolution because it steals, it goes to reason you would hate the US and desire its dissolution even more. But alas, people are not perfect in balancing their desires, either.