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United Nations vs SQL Injections
Giorgio Maone writes "The United Nations web site has been defaced by 3 crackers who replaced the speeches of the Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon with their own pacifist message.
This article briefly analyzes the exploited vulnerability and the technology used on the server, both quite surprising to find in such a high profile site."
The UN was ineffective due to half-assedly fucking up a security detail? That's un-possible!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
It wasn't hacked! Their website clearly states it is down for scheduled maintenance. Honestly, some people need to stop spreading these fake stories!
both quite surprising to find in such a high profile site
Are we really that surprised? I thought it was pretty standard that most of the "high profile sites" out there are the ones least likely to understand the importance of keeping their software up to date. It seems like the larger the company/organization/multi-national quasi-governmental agency, the more likely they are to simply buy in to whatever is being promoted by (insert your favorite vendor here), and won't upgrade unless something breaks or they can afford to buy whatever (insert your favorite vendor here) is selling in the quantities and packages they are selling it.
Maybe it's not such a surprise, considering that
Or the standard page when the web monkey flips the "maintenance mode" switch...
Plus I'm sure they scheduled the downtime (for right now) after they noticed the crack.
I personally would have sneaked in and invented a new UN agency with its own inscrutable and almost-pronounceable acronym, and then sat back and watched.
Just imagine if, halfway down this page, you get an entry like this:
UNCRP: Works in field missions to improve standards in accordance with self-determined metrics. Composed of members elected to permanent positions based on a variety of factors subservient to aforementioned goals, assuming goals have been determined prior to agency initiation. Primary work areas include inter-agency provision of UNCRP-related efforts, with the ultimate objective of improving standards, mainly in the field.
One quick email to follow up:
To: secgen@un.org
From: Agency Coordination and Initiation Subcommittee to the Secretariat
Subject: Need traction on UNCRP agency kickstart
Dear sir:
With respect to the newly established UNCRP agency, we respectfully request formal approval of resources. We expect to be operational within 5 years and will submit the initial statement of work within 3 years from approval.
Thank you for providing the momentum to this newly founded agency; we have dedicated much effort to the realization of the UNCRP, as it is conducive to the eradication of, several things in the UN charter.
Regards,
Rolf Wittigersen
And that should be it. Make yourself some popcorn, and watch the headless wonder of a new UN agency being created. At least with the UNCRP, it would be purposeless by design rather than through the diligent work of its employees.
The Banjo Players Must Die!
http://www.cgisecurity.com/questions/sql.shtmlm l
http://www.cgisecurity.com/questions/blindsql.sht
Many other papers on the subject
http://www.cgisecurity.com/development/sql.shtml
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/sta tments_full.asp?statID=105'
-jim
This is not unlike an issue I discovered a little while back. An online application suite for schools designed for easy manipulation of databases containing student records was subject to SQL injection using the web interface. The web interface was designed for parents to get an up to date progress report for their child, or for students to select courses without resorting to paperwork.
Well, passing along the escape character (') to the login page returned the following message:
java.sql.SQLException: ORA-01756: quoted string not properly terminated
I played with this a little while, and eventually was able to mine my friend's student number. Figuring I should probably notify someone, I talked to my high school's technical department.
They put me on the line to the staff at the provincial team. I tell them about the problem and suggest that they contact the company that built the software to begin with.
They close the web interface, and contact the developer. Now, four months later, the issue STILL isn't patched on the thousands of other installs across North America. I tried directly contacting the developer, AAL Solutions. No reply. I finally dug up an email for the Independent School implementation of eSIS. It seems that the developer is still working on it. Slowly.
Unavailable due to scheduled maintenance. Heheheh. Also, why is lying always the first reaction? Scheduled my ass. I'm getting fed up of this. Lies everywhere.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Err... chill dude...
I hate printers.
Since when was a UN resolution worth more than the paper it was written on?
Since no one (cough America) listens to the UN anymore. This is hardly the UN's fault. Just like the league of nations, it has no power to enforce its mandates. Blame the countries that refused to empower the UN.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At first reading, I thought that the UN was defaced by some white people, and the author was just being racist.
Then I imagined that the UN as a society of pimps. This is where I live now. In my mind.
As a nation, the US has made numerous commitments to the UN, and that includes agreements to follow things like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When we *agree* to follow International Law, we ought to, don't you think? Especially when we're heavily involved in creating that law in the first place?
...
The fact is that the UN, while it does have a lot of problems, is also far more effective and dare-I-say-it even important than most people in the US ever give it credit for. It's far from a perfect system, but it's still the best we have. We're one of the rich kids on the playground, and one of the strong kids on the playground, and we don't always enjoy what the student government wants to do--so we turn away from it sometimes. But that doesn't mean that it isn't important, or helpful, or that it doesn't, sometimes, do what's right. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't work with it, sometimes, and give it more credit for what it does and tries to do.
Instead, we tend to discount it. Because sometimes we don't like what it says about us or others in the playground, and because it's politically convenient (and salable) for our leaders to emphasize our strength and autonomy, all of our accomplishments and our not-inconsiderable military and economic muscle, and all of our pride. Some degree of Nationalism isn't a terrible thing, and we do have a lot to be proud of--but we also still have a lot to do, and to accomplish, as a nation and as members of larger world, and pretending the other children on the playground are irrelevant doesn't help us to do those things.
Also, don't you want the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to apply to US Citizens in a US Court or on the streets? The Bill of Rights is getting stretched more thinly every day, and the anti-terrorist effort (though directed in part by well-meaning people) is cutting swaths in our Constitution.
--Me
The subtlest change in New York is something that people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.
All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer who might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.
It used to be that the Statue of Liberty was the signpost that proclaimed New York and translated it for all the world. Today Liberty shares the role with Death. Along the East River, from the razed slaughterhouses of Turtle Bay, as though in a race with the spectral flight of planes, men are carving out the permanent headquarters of the United Nations -- the greatest housing project of them all. In its stride, New York takes on one more interior city, to shelter, this time, all governments, and to clear the slum called war.
This race -- this race between the destroying planes and the struggling Parliament of Man -- it sticks in all our heads. The city at last perfectly illustrates both the universal dilemma and the general solution, this riddle in steel and stone is at once the perfect target and the perfect demonstration of nonviolence, of racial brotherhood, this lofty target scraping the skies and meeting the destroying planes halfway, home of all people and all nations, capital of everything, housing the deliberations by which the planes are to be stayed and their errand forestalled.
-- E.B. White, from "Here Is New York," 1948
Yeah! And koalas are little bitches!
Looking through your posting history and finding such gems as, "I say beat the shit out of the jerks, maybe they'll think twice before doing it again," I guess I'd be safe to classify you as a trollish, impotent, angry young man.
But you're right, let's get rid of the "opposition to war or violence as a means for resolving disputes" (American Heritage) that pacifism entails, close down our embassies, withdraw our diplomats, and resolve our differences - without exception - with a good old-fashioned wrestle. My wife volunteers; does yours?
Lest you be accused of being "too cowardly to take a stand", should you not be planning a military coup of the UN or something, rather than posting on Slashdot? Only the "soft headed moron" would use words when he has his almighty fists. Onward into battle, tfiddler, for the freedom of our glorious nation rests on your shoulders!
So it coincidence the site is down for scheduled maintenance right now? I suppose this maintenance was scheduled immediately following their defacement?
SQL injection in a high-profile site is not surprising or uncommon. When you work with back end databases, your protection from such an attack is only all the programmers that make up the DB interfaces on your website. This happens often due to laziness, lack of knowledge, or simple mistakes. It's pretty frequent when you have people collaborate on a project as well. One person might be the best security programmer in the world and do 95% of the website. That "other" guy that did 5% of it could eb the reason you just got hacked. Web attacks are becoming more and more common and will continue to rise with Web 2.0 features. Surprising? Not at all... we see this stuff all the time and on more popular sites than un.org (is that really saying much?).
Shame on you, let me explain why: INFO: As a matter of fact Israel is the only real democracy of the area and is sorrounded by enemy nations for religious matters. The last one is Lebanon (a muppet-state with apparently no powers on its own territory). In lebanon there is a "official" army hitting Palestians refugees and another Islamic army (Hezbolla) which is financed by other nations and likes to advocate the death of israelis and send casual ballistic missiles on "enemy" cities. Palestinians like to detonate on public transport, discos and markets, of course even they have a array of missiles. They are thorn between islamic extremism and extreme terrorism. Iranians one day and the next one are treatening the distruction of Israel. They had a workshop on the allerged Sionist control of the world and are opening working on a Atomic Bomb design with the blessing of the idiotic pacifists of half the world. In this context there you go blaming them for disrespecting all those resolutions that basically say "for the sake of peace let the islamics kill you". So i take that applying the same logic no-one can criticise the USA preventive war on terror which basically is "for the sake of peace we kill them first". Also people tend to forget that with Congo and Sudan it is clear that the ONU it's not doing its job. For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhWgZu6tcZU
In the world of developing high volume web sites in a secure fashion, it is very easy to say "proactive," but very hard to do.
.NET event-driven model for web page development, writing very insecure code because they really didn't have their heads around the timing of code execution or the mechanisms behind view state.
I have worked with many web developers who thought they knew a lot about making web sites secure, and who didn't even know what a SQL Injection vulnerability was. Why didn't they know? Because they had never run across it before. It had not been taught in their school, nor in any of the "how to use Microsoft Visual Studio" training they had.
The "well nobody told me" problem is hard to surmount, and it can have dire consequences. A friend of mine worked at a place where the senior architect explicitly forbade parameterizing SQL queries because he thought it was needless code complexity and a waste of time! I have also seen developers struggle with the
One thing that got me a while back was an exploit reported by Microsoft involving a means by which extra information about the web site could be teased out of the http header under some circumstances. Our client followed Microsoft's instructions for tweaking IIS to prevent the attack, and several of our pages started trying to redirect to invalid URLs. Problems like that bug me because of how difficult it is to be aware of them in advance. One has to invest a lot of time in keeping up with the latest news on a wide variety of web-related technologies (just to learn about the problems), and even more time in re-writing your code based on the new knowledge. What was secure yesterday isn't secure today, and designing sites that will remain secure tomorrow requires a very great deal of money, time, and effort to be spent in activities that don't always seem to have a measurable benefit at the time.
So...I can sympathize.
Any organization which elects Libya to chair it's "Human Rights Council" automatically loses any right to be taken seriously.
..... it kinda reminds me of Slashdot, actually ;)
Seriously, is it possible any more to even pretend that the UN is anything but a forum for tinpot dictators and other nameless losers to bitch, complain, and blame the west for all of Earth's problems?
Come to think of it
You'll notice that webpages of governments, political parties and other highly bureaucratic systems are usually quite vulnerable. This is due to a few factors.
First of all, whatever they do, use or change needs about a truckload of paperwork and red tape to get done. They're not only vulnerable to 0day exploits, they're usually vulnerable to exploits that have been around for a year or two, simply because they cannot respond quickly to security threats and vulnerabilities.
Then there's that compatibility issue. Especially when dealing with multiple partners, you have to find some kind of way that makes it easy for every partner to incorporate their content into your system. You must not prefer any, you must not use a system that would block certain partners and participants out due to incompatibility. Now, compatibility usually boils down to the lowest common denominator. And that's usually not the most secure one.
And finally the good ol' fact that the people who work there are usually not the creme of the crop, the best of the best and the spearhead of excellence, or they'd be in free enterprise making more money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
to check for SQL injection like this on a website is to do something like this:
a tments_full.asp?statID=105%20OR%201=1
a tments_full.asp?statID=105
http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/st
If they're not using parameter binding and/or properly sanitizing user input, this should return a different record (article in this case) than the original URL. - http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/st
Still vulnerable: SQL error
I'll bite, anon.
You may have noticed that in all of Israel's neighbors, you would be hard-pressed to find ONE secular state, or even a functioning democracy.
Whereas in Israel, fundamentalist nutjobs do get fined or jailed whenever they stir up trouble. They don't get to evade the law when they excise their daughters, slay victims of rape in "honor killings", lapidate adulterers, etc, etc, etc.
To the point, I might add, that at the moment, Muslims have control of the temple mount... the Hebrew/Jewish temple mount. And they put a mosque on it. They have done numerous things specifically to insult the Jews... for religious reasons. Now, are you going to argue that the Islamic religion is older than the Jewish religion? He lived in the 6th century, AD; Moses lived quite a bit earlier than that. Even secular skeptics will agree that the Old Testament was written before the 6th century AD... I mean, the Jews were persecuted by the Romans, attacked by the Persians, Babylonians, Assyrians... this is ancient history, not 5th century history.
With that in mind, then, and knowing that the Jewish temple was in place long, long before the Islamic religion existed, how is it that Israel is stealing Palestinian lands... when an Islamic mosque sits on top of the Jews' temple mount itself?
To argue that Israel is "stealing" Palestinian land... well, if I squatted on your land and kicked you off, I'm not sure you'd think you were stealing it if you decided to try to take it back.
And again, with that in mind, the way the Islamic countries are fighting Israel is far from humane. Bombings, random missles... well, a previous post summed it up nicely.
But, strangely enough, as previously mentioned... paper from the UN doesn't really seem to affect the Islamic religious militaries. They don't seem to care. I wonder why? Perhaps it's like a mother who just tells his child over and over that "you're gonna get it if you do that again!" ... but the child very quickly learns that he never DOES get it.
I do not deny that the jews was in that area of land before Islam even existed.
But if the jewish people have the god given right to take the land now owned by someone else because they was there first. A lot of people will have to move out of there own country.
The 3 main ones off the top of my head -
America - native Americans
England - celts
Australia - aborigines.
why ain't we giving them back the land? 2 of the 3 mentioned was within the last 300 to 100 years and even in the last century.
To say they have the right to destroy the government that was in place is insane. They should of done what _any_ civilized society would of done with the situation, immigrated and merged with the current society that was in place.
You really need to lay off the theory and try living in the real world.
Now let's pretend for a minute that 'positive liberty' is all BS. Let's pretend that the libertarian ideology on liberty is the most moral one. Let's say UN implements your Libertarian Declaration of Human Rights.
Now how will that be a step in the right direction for the freedom and safety of mankind (pretty big words for statement devoid of any arguments)? Do realize that no one will even care about this document, let alone even paying lip service to it's requirements. The vast majority of the earth couldn't give a flying fuck about your rants on positive and negative liberty. Fuck, most of them are so poor that they can't really have a debate on this issue.
Try explaining the dangers of positive liberty to an illiterate African kid. Try telling him that the government should not be building school or hospitals because that means richer people will have to pay more taxes and it increases government involvement in the individual's life. Most people don't care about your Ivory tower rants. People want education and healthcare. People don't want to see their kids dying from something stupid like malaria. People want at least baseline prosperity.
Don't get me wrong, I am not really arguing against libertarian ideology. I am just pointing out that libertarian views on positive liberty issues is a extreme view than is not shared by the majority of the population of our planet. And it doesn't matter whether they are right or wrong.
Okay, forget positive liberty issues. Let's look at social liberalism, you would think there would be more consensus on this one, right? So how are you planning to force all nations on the planet to ratify a document that would essentially legalize the vast majority of illegal drugs (if not all, I guess it depends how hardcore you are about such things, I don't know, I don't really see the point in recreational use of heroin)? Hell, we have troubles legally enforcing the current declaration because many muslim nations like making exceptions (I am beating your wife is right, no? What kind of barbarian would want to ban something like that?), I am not even talking about practical implementation of the current declaration.
The UN isn't about world peace and prosperity and promoting rights. It's about comprising and trying to find a mutually acceptable solution while at the same time trying to advance freedom/prosperity.
I don't even know why I wrote this. You're just a naive little American, with no understanding of the world around him. Your one size fits all attitude is just laughable. It's because of people like you that I don't like libertarians. Libertarians are kind of like communists in a way, flip side of the same coin.
The UNO knows what to do. See my small cartoon: http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2007/08 /strong-uno.html
Bye,
Oliver
Beside the overly zealous use of commas, that would, with all due respect, convince the Secretary General, if he is the recipient, that the email was, in fact, sent by William Shatner, its a great idea!
The UN is really a complete affront to democracy. It's effectively a five country dictatorship. You have 5 countries which can veto the will of all the world's countries and they can never be removed from their position on the Security Council. They can also veto the appointment of a UN Secretary General, even if the rest of the world wants that person for the role. It's amazing really that the media do not direct their attention at the UN's completely undemocratic structure rather than just its operational failures (which often stem from that structure).
I mean, what's more outrageous. That some UN officials have been corrupt in the past or that the organisation is itself a dictatorship?
But if the jewish people have the god given right to take the land now owned by someone else because they was there first. A lot of people will have to move out of there own country. I believe I entirely left God out of the picture. Partially because you would likely complain that my religion was getting in the way of my politics, or something like that... so I left my religion entirely out of it, and never mentioned God.
why ain't we giving them back the land? 2 of the 3 mentioned was within the last 300 to 100 years and even in the last century. Indeed.. rise and fall of nations apparently is entirely ... well, mostly based on force. Romans, Greeks, Babylonians, Persians, Medes, Turks, English, American...
To say they have the right to destroy the government that was in place is insane. They should of done what _any_ civilized society would of done with the situation, immigrated and merged with the current society that was in place. If I remember correctly, they were given the land of Israel by, in fact, the United Nations in 1948... or, well, they approved at least. I guess Britain technically "owned" it.
So, now that Israel IS in place, can we justify Palestine for continuing to attack them, claiming Israel is on their land?
Basically, both Jews and Muslims claim the "holy land" as their own. So, who do we support, then, or do we just let them blow themselves to bits?
Seems to me that, if the issue IS a religious one, if the issue IS whose holy land it is, we should go with the historically accurate one... and I would argue that, to be historically accurate, we would have to say it belongs to the Jews. They took the land quite a long time ago from races that no longer exist, really.
Only extremist groups? Hm. Was Germany an extermist group? I know, they weren't Islamic. But that wasn't really just an extremist group... admittedly, an "extremist group" ended up in control of the country, but there didn't appear to be a huge outcry by the general populace, either. Maybe there was and I'm not aware of it, of course.
According to Wikipedia, immediately after Israel was independent, the following nations declared war on Israel: Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, and Iraq. After Israel won, ceasefires were signed.
Regarding the Suez canal and the Sinai Peninsula... Israel didn't allow UN people to be on their side. Egypt did. But, not very soon after, wikipedia says.. "On May 19, 1967, Egypt expelled UNEF observers,[17] and deployed 100,000 soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula.[18] It then closed the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping,[19][20] catapulting the region back to the pre-1956 status quo. On May 30, 1967, Jordan entered into the mutual defense pact between Egypt and Syria. President Nasser declared: "Our basic objective is the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."[21]"
So, basically, Egypt kicks the UN observers out, deploys soldiers, cancels Israeli shipping, basically starting a war. Jordan and Syria and Egypt combine with this. Nasser says that his nation wants the destruction of Israel. President Nasser, not the president of Jamas or some extremist group.. the president of the nation of Egypt. Israel responded with a preemptive strike, the Six Days' War, and totally beat the Egyptian air force; then they attacked Jordanian, Syrian... AND Iraqi air forces. So, Iraq again. Air force... not extremist groups. This is the air force.
Furthermore, regarding Iraq: "In June, 1981, Israel successfully attacked and destroyed newly built Iraqi nuclear facilities in Operation Opera.
During the Gulf War, Iraq fired 39 missiles into Israel, in the hopes of uniting the Arab world against the coalition which sought to liberate Kuwait. At the behest of the United States, Israel did not respond to this attack in order to prevent a greater outbreak of war.[27]"
Now, technically, it seems mostly terrorist groups. The question is ... how condoning and sympathetic the nations of Syria, Lebanon, Iran, etc, are of groups like Al Quaeda and Hezbollah. Just as people tend to argue that if an American company is openly doing some form of "evil" somewhere in the world and the American government does nothing about it... well, imagine if America had a large terrorist group dedicated to destroying Mexico, and the government didn't seem to care.
'If I remember correctly, they were given the land of Israel by, in fact, the United Nations in 1948... or, well, they approved at least. I guess Britain technically "owned" it.'
... well, mostly based on force. Romans, Greeks, Babylonians, Persians, Medes, Turks, English, American...'
If you ask the British or I'm sure the Jews. If you ask anyone else in the middle east I think you would hear a different story.
'Indeed.. rise and fall of nations apparently is entirely
No question about it and that only makes sense. After all, a 'nation' is a body that imposes its will upon the peoples of as large an area as possible by threatening to harm them in some way if they don't obey it.
'Basically, both Jews and Muslims claim the "holy land" as their own. So, who do we support, then, or do we just let them blow themselves to bits?'
Sounds like a fairly reasonable choice to me. If a bunch of idiots want to classify themselves based upon some ridiculous mythology they have chosen to believe and further want to attack others who believe in different invisible men then I say let them have at it. I for one am rather annoyed that one of these invisible man worshiping idiots rigged an election and proceeded to embroil my nation into this nonsense.
'Seems to me that, if the issue IS a religious one, if the issue IS whose holy land it is, we should go with the historically accurate one... and I would argue that, to be historically accurate, we would have to say it belongs to the Jews.'
Seems to me that we have clearly established the issue is NOT a religious one and has nothing to do with holy lands. We have established rather soundly that the issue is one of nations and that nations are an issue of force. I say we fail to recognize any government in the middle east until it stabilizes (no matter how many thousands of years that might be), trade with anyone who has money and sell weapons to anyone who has money. As for the invisible men granting holy lands, lets just leave them to the nuts shall we?
What are the things that you are claiming that the UN is effective at? As far as I can tell, there are only two things: (1) giving hand-outs to the desperately poor, and (2) keeping tinpot dictators in power. One could argue that these together are self-perpetuating.
Yea, because the third world is responsible for global warming, sweatshopped labour, "pre-emptive" wars and capitalistic plutocracy. Get over yourself, if you think the west's natural position is at the top of the human pecking order. If you had any perspective at all you'd know that history has shown again and again that any empire or civilization that seeks to place itself above others will eventually be pulled out of privilege, or die due to the inherent instabilities that arise when a whole order is based upon competitive self-serving narcissism.
I hate printers.
I've worked in both commercial and government organizations, and stupidity happens in both. If a commercial site messes up, it is just easier for them to hide it because the consequences are usually more localized and they can just pay off parties affected.
Almost all companies and organizations are cheap and want the most while paying the least. Governments are often not given much money for items outside of their core function, and websites often fall into that classification. Commercial entities do spend more on esthetics though. I've seen contractors make a commercial site super pretty and the head hancho's really liked it, but it ran like malassis on modems at a time when high-speed was not common (inside they had high-speed). They also used a lot of JavaScript to make it fancy, but it crashed on versions of browsers that they didn't test. They chose fancy over robust. Perhaps commercial and gov't make different flavors of mistakes and shortsighted decisions, but they both make mistakes.
Table-ized A.I.
'Basically, both Jews and Muslims claim the "holy land" as their own. So, who do we support, then, or do we just let them blow themselves to bits?'
At the heart of the problem is that Muslims and Christians both desperately want to be Jews. They, too, want the 'special deal' with 'god' that the Jews got.
But the Jews don't want someone not born a Jew (or who went thru a *very* special process of conversion) to share in Jewness. The Jews want neither Muslims nor Christians to be Jews.
This 'Holy land' is holy to Christians, Muslims *and* Jews for this very reason; that the Christians and Muslims want to be Jews.
And thats at the heart of most of the problems of the middle east and has leaked out into many other parts of the world.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I doubt that very much. The UN couldn't pour sand of a boot even with instructions written on the heel.
How long has the genocide in Darfur been going on? Last I heard, the UN issued a proclamation that said basically, "stop or we'll say top again". How about those times the UN security forces allowed militants and war lords to drive right past them and kill the civilians they were supposed to be protecting? How about all those rape and child sex slave cases being hushed up by the UN?
The only time UN security forces are able to do a damn thing that is useful is when the United States or one of our trusted friends (UK, Canada, Australia, etc) is in charge of it.
The UN may be been created with noble intent, but it now only serves to keep tin-pot dictators in power. Look who's on the commission for human rights. The worse evil dictator bastards on the planet.
Look who the UN just put in charge of the commission on sustainability. The representative from Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe! OMFG! They have about 3000% inflation in that country! Once an exporter of food, now suffering mass famine. All because of the policies of the evil dictator Mugabe. But hey, Mugabe's policies just got the rubber stamp from the UN, so it must be desirable.
Any argument that the UN is useful and/or necessary is both morally and intellectually bankrupt given its past history and current (in)actions.
-- Will program for bandwidth
There is no stumbling block here. All the hacker had to do would be to escape their own apostrophe. That's the very vulnerability that makes this work.
'; update speeches set text = 'Don''t try to hack this site, I beat you to it.' where id = 1;'All the rest of it is just gravy.
at least i have the courage to post as someone and not as an anonymous coward. oh, i volunteered btw, right out of hs, i'm also far from a young man and i've probably seen and experience more of this world than you. in any case, your name calling is no different than mine, however i happen to be right.
Democrats and Republicans are like AIDS and Cancer, I want neither!
Representatives from the United States of; DROP TABLE; frown on such SQL Injections
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
Libya chaired the Commission on Human Rights, not the Human Rights Council. The Human Rights Council is in fact the successor to the now-defunct Commission on Human Rights; it was created to address the failures of the UNCHR, and Libya's tenure as chair was part of the impetus for the creation of the new body. Although the UNHRC has not fared much better, it is nonetheless wise not to ignore actual facts in favor of needless polemics.
English is easier said than done.
Presuming you're not pro-Israel by default (in which case I'll never convince you), I'd just like to point out that it just is not true that the land now called "Israel" was most certainly NOT purely vacant prior to 1948, as you seem to believe. The land was populated, but since 1948 there have been incremental displacements of the local population, inch by inch, year by year. Just look at the current building of the wall. It goes deep onto the other side of the border, illegally annexing the land for all intents and purposes. This has been going on for a half century, they push the border a bit, put a few settlements there and then say "oh well, we're here now, can't go back in time so let's just live with how it is now".
As I said though, if you're just pro-Israeli, there's nothing I'll be able to say to convince you of the injustice of the situation. You'll just keep pointing to the suicide bombers and rocket firing terrorists and saying how evil they are, ignoring the fact that they are only doing what every other nation would do under those circumstances. So if you're pro-Israeli, lets just agree that we're not going to see eye to eye, and leave it at that.
-Naz
I hate printers.
I don't know why so many people seem to think that putting all your eggs in one basket is at all wise.
I would like to mod SplatMan +1, Kind.
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
Yeah, I personally believe that having multiple nontotally cooperative countries (BUT that are unlikely to go to war with each other) is good. Let the countries negotiate with each other.
Then if some country gets really crappy, people move elsewhere.
After all if you look at the proliferation of crappy country governments, why should most people want to risk a crappy world government? Like how are you going to choose the world government? The same way the crappy country govs were chosen?
Like how stupid is that? What problem are you trying to solve? And is the "solution" better than the problem?
My article was modded as a Troll. Again. It's been years since I was able to moderate. Oh, well.
But FWIW, I think it's legitimate to point out that it's not only the USA and Israel doing the killing. The hack's statement was hypocritical. You never see hacks urging extremists to stop the terror.
The value of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights outside the borders of the United States is substantially less than that of toilet paper.
And when you are outside the borders of the United States, you can be damn sure that your government supported by your courts, constitution and bill of rights will consider you substantially less valuable than its international trade agreements.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Any nation that seeks to put itself above others will eventually not be. What a fabulous non-statement. Every monarchy will eventually end! Every nation with an A in the title will end! All of those statements are just as true as yours, it doesn't take much. Up to this point we haven't seen anything that qualifies as forever but there have been plenty who made pretty good runs, and they were not the meek and complacent.
Good one, one of my favs is "Hello Super Nintendo Chalmers".
LOL!
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
'Cause nothing says, "Pacifist" like vandalizing somebody else's stuff...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
What the UN has actually turned into is the equivalent of raiding your town jail and local loony-bin to find members for your town council. While the concept of "equal representation" might seem noble, in these cases it fails horribly.
We (the "western" nations) have already recognized the fact that negotiating with terrorists, tyrants, and fascists is not only useless but counter-productive. Our foreign policies generally reflect that. Yet at the same time we allow such individuals to take part in UN discussions, and vote on matters with a voice equal to those of liberal democracies. I shouldn't need to point out the foolishness of such a hypocritical policy. The UN should have been scrapped years ago.
The fact is that the UN, while it does have a lot of problems, is also far more effective and dare-I-say-it even important than most people in the US ever give it credit for. It's far from a perfect system, but it's still the best we have.
The UN tends to keep the various powers, especially European and Russian, but also China and Japan, tied up in red tape so they are less inclined to engage in world wars. It also sets up a standard system whereby brutal third world dictators can demand and receive handouts while they butcher their people. This isn't far from its original intent: to get various nations to sit down and talk rather than invading each other, but it's nothing like the vision the one world government people have for it.
The usual critique of democracy is that it's far from perfect, but that it's the best we have. The UN is also the best we have, but it is absolutely awful. There is *nothing* in the UN's charter or design that would ever make them lift a finger to stop a genocide.
Also, don't you want the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to apply to US Citizens in a US Court or on the streets?
Not particularly. Have you actually read the thing? Well, I haven't, because it's ridiculously long, but I skimmed it pretty well. It's missing some key stuff, like an equivalent to the US Constitution's tenth ammendment. The framers realized one key point: many people will only tend to agree on a few fundamentals. So your key documents should be short and sweet (and, consequently, timeless!) and the more local bodies will go into more detail.
but we also still have a lot to do, and to accomplish, as a nation and as members of larger world
Nations don't have agendas, and, being sovereign, they are not members of anything larger. Your intentions may be laudable, but they require that the modern nation-state change into something fundamentally different from what it is. The liberal democratic nation state has served us poorly to decently for the last few hundred years and has been an order of magnitude better than anything that came before it. And most of the experiments of the last century have been tragedies orders of magnitude larger than anything humanity could conceive of.
It seems like most of the people talking about AJAX and Web2.0 don't even really know what it is. Ajax isn't any bigger of a security threat than is allowing the users of your website to use get or post on a URL, which nearly every site of any complexity already does.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.