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UN Names N. Korea Chair of Disarmament Committee
LibRT writes "The irony-challenged folks at the UN have named North Korea chair of the Conference on Disarmament, which is heavily focused on the prevention of a nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament. The Canadian government has boycotted the convention, calling it an 'absurd' turn of events: 'North Korea is simply not a credible chair of a disarmament body. The fact that it gets a turn chairing a United Nations committee focused on disarmament is unacceptable, given the North Korean regime's efforts in the exact opposite direction.'"
Note that Libya was once president of the UN's Human Rights Commission, and only recently removed from its successor in interest, the Human Rights Council.
In other news, UN Secretary General as quoted today as saying "The reprsentative from Burundi owes me 10 euros", followed by laughter broken up with occasional phrases like "suck it", "who's your daddy", and various other remarks.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
All this does it highlight how it is not representative of the people of sovereign member states.
OMG, the UN is Useless....
a little preemptive reward to push them in the right direction maybe? We know it worked out last time.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Are we on fark.com or something? The snarky BS belongs there, or to the Idle section.
...sheep rancher Nimrod Doofus just traded his Collie for a wolf.
won the peace nobel prize, I say: what the hell.
If you bothered to RTFA you'd realize that the chair rotates among all the nations and North Korea will only hold it until August 19th.
Can someone please explain why the U.S. should host, subsidize, or be a member of the U.N. given its current condition and activities? In all seriousness, I can think of no reason whatsoever.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
This has nothing to do with being irony-challenged and everything to do with representation.
1) the UN is an international body which encourages participation from all. You don't make peace with your friends, you make it with your enemies.
2) the Conference On Disarmament is not like the Security Council
3) the chair of the Conference On Disarmament is appointed on a rotational basis, so the UN has not deliberately and fecklessly chosen North Korea; they are a member of the Conference (they need to be so we can discuss disarmament with them) so the chair comes to them eventually.
4) the chairmanship period is ONLY SIX WEEKS LONG
5) without such bizarre situations it would be difficult for the world to stand up and mention the bitter irony and discuss North Korea's record, now wouldn't it?
I appreciate this isn't going to stop the armchair John Boltons of slashdot, and I consider this a service to others who might otherwise feel the need to raise their blood pressure to deal with the inevitable idiots. I got this one guys; you can deal with it when Israel gets the chair.
The only political body in UN that has any relevance whatsoever is the Security Council, and even then only its permanent members. The rest of UN political organizations are there mostly for lulz (I don't know any other reasonable explanation for the current membership of UNHRC), and in any case, all they do is write strongly worded condemnations - mostly of Israel.
Now, UN is not entirely useless in a sense that it does have a bunch of non-political organizations that actually do useful work, like UNESCO. It's probably worth keeping it around for those, with political circus being an unfortunate attachment.
TFS implies that there was some kind of specific decision to choose North Korea to preside based on an assessment of merit, but this is not the case. The rules of procedures for the Conference of Disarmanent state (in rule 9): "When the Conference is in session, the Presidency of the Conference shall rotate among all its members; each President shall preside for a four-working-week period."
*cussing rant deleted by author*
Wow, just when you thought the UN couldn't get any more worthless and a complete waste of every country's tax dollars, they top themselves.
I agree with Canada on this one. AND, I think we need to cut them off of every penny we give them until they wake up, as in ALL aid to anyone gets cut off while Norks chair anything but an electric chair.
Take the Red Pill.
The money they bring in more than offsets the cost of hosting.
we let a country with thousands of nuclear weapons dispersed around the world, maintained in constant readiness, many of which can be armed in minutes and delivered with pin-point accuracy to any spot on the globe, chair a disarmament commission.
Nah, we all know they're just manipulated by the private sector's elite under the guise of a "think tank". They're called the Majestic 12.
You heartless mods. Somewhere there is a bot, training endlessly to create English sentences. It uses slashdot moderation as scoring, and you are killing any chance of improvement! Look at the phrase "I don't completely before posts." All it lacks is a verb - is that not worth a +1, Good Effort?
Can someone please explain why the U.S. should host, subsidize, or be a member of the U.N. given its current condition and activities? In all seriousness, I can think of no reason whatsoever.
The U.S. tends to look down on the U.N., as do most truly powerful countries. But the U.S. also is incredibly undereducated about the U.N. compared to many other nations, in part because we look down on the U.N. and our media provides information so slowly that snails eclipsed their information store long ago, and in part because as a powerful country with our own independent foreign agenda, we frankly tend to have more news that's related to what we are doing than we do about what the U.N. is doing.
But the U.N. is still important--it provides support for some important humanitarian work, for one (UNICEF and UNODC come to mind). It provides an international mechanism for justice and oversight of elections and regime change when countries are ready for those things. (The International Criminal Tribunals and later the International Criminal Court, for example.) It also determines whether wars are legal or illegal under International law, and arbitrates certain small disputes under international law. The legality of a war will influence the legitimacy of that war in the eyes of the world.
The Security Council was effectively neutered for the cold war by the perpetual split between Russia and and the U.S. China had no rep for a while in the 50s, and because of that the U.S. got approval for the Korean War (i.e. the UN action against North Korea). China learned its lesson and started sending representatives to the security council again. The U.S., similarly, as one of the only world powers with a veto over security council resolutions--a power that would NEVER be given to the US in a new, similar international body today--has a great interest in maintaining its presence in the United Nations.
In addition, the level of isolationism in the US is frankly frightening. It's nothing like North Korea, of course, but there are a LOT of Americans who are incredibly insular. It isn't as bad as some of the numbers suggest--the very few Americans having a passport is more a testimony to the fact that you have to go farther to cross a border than you do in Europe--but it's bad. Most people in the US know effectively nothing about modern international affairs, and only a small percentage know anything about international history. During the presidential election, for example, then-candidate Obama expressing his willingness to go into Pakistan if necessary was a relatively small bit of trivia here, and most people had no freaking clue how upset his statements to that effect made pretty much everyone in Pakistan. Fast-forward a few years, and you see the consequences of that ignorance--the public's response to Pakistan's being upset with the actual raid isn't "We know how big a deal this was for you, we felt we had to do it, and we'll make it up to you," it was "if you're upset it must be because you were hiding Osama!"
We need more international involvement, not less. Better education. Why the hell we don't have every schoolchild in America watching good conferences on major international issues via the web and answering quizzes on them I have no idea. Not every day--but do four conferences a year on different subjects, and they'd learn a hell of a lot.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
It's a worse-than-useless joke that literally merits destruction. All its does is tie the hands of the fools who take it seriously.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Canada's just jealous because their persistent stupidity at the UN finally turned other countries against them last year.
Please note that the Canadian Government has been re-branded Harper Government. And to that end, I would like to note that a lot of Canadian's don't supports its foreign policy.
The United States deserves the chairmanship, on a semi-permanent basis.
In terms of volume, the United States is doing more to disarm itself than any other country. We presently have disarmament operations underway over Afghanistan, Libya, and to a lesser extent Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
The international criminal court and international criminal tribunals have a pretty big problem in the fact that neither of them are recognized by the the world's current lone superpower.
The US does not recognize either of these bodies. That is a pretty fundamental problem for a supposedly international organization.
Oh, we recognize the international court, but only when it does something we like.
It's not like anyone needs a court to find out who in US is a war criminal.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
If slashdot were worth anything, they'd permanently ban you.
But North Korea is not even a member of the UN, for crying out loud!!! Yeah, I know that Libya headed the human rights council, and Iran or Syria headed another similar UN committee - I'm forgetting which - but in this case, N Korea, as a non member, can't even be there.
That was the one time the UN was right and effective, and that too due to a Soviet walk-out and the fact that China's permanent membership was then w/ the KMT - as a result, nobody vetoed the UN resolution in question, and North Korea got expelled.
You can't blame the rest of the world for trying.
I don't think anyone gets why North Korea is actually an ideal choice for the UN Disarmament chair. Check out the website and you'll get a clue. Sure, there's lip-service from the council on WMDs and nuclear weapons, but the major effort right now is toward disarming the civilians of every country. And in that regard, North Korea is an excellent example of how thoroughly it can be done, and a perfect choice to lead the effort in teaching other countries to do the same.
Despite Eric Holder's efforts with ATF's "Gunrunner" and "Fast and Furious" programs seemed to have backfired, and the disarmament media effort in North America will be significantly curtailed due to the inept handling of that false flag effort. A country like North Korea - probably the world leader in successful disarmament of its citizens, is the perfect choice for restarting the international effort, and assisting the United States in making better progress in that regard.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
do stupid stuff like selling weapons to mexican drug smuggler gangs and many other stupid things the UN would not be voting against the USA and not be so contrary towards the USA
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I am so dumping this into Cleverbot.
BAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA .... gulp,
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA,
Dem cracker-niggers be digg'n bunkers in da back yard now, real fast,
--\
If you're seriously trying to call recent U.S. presidents war criminals, you're horridly ignorant of world affairs.
Parent pic is scatological.
For instance, Germany often is heard talking about human rights. Germany! But what country can? Name a single one that does not have a laundry list of human rights abuses to its name. Probably even south-sudan, the newest country, already has a past soaked in blood. Oh it has? Well that proves it then.
The US, the country with the biggest arms budget, holding the chair for disarmerment?
The chair rotation happens precisely for this reason, to allow those who have not rewritten history to make themselve look PC, to also have a voice.
Remember, that if the UN has been older, the slave owning nations would not have allowed non-slave holding nations to speak because what could they possibly know about the subject.
And the canadians are hardly innocent, they rely heavily on the US for nuclear protection and their human rights record is dismal. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones and EVERYONE lives in glass houses when world politics are concerned.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The US does not have an embassy in North Korea. Surely anyone who knows anything about diplomacy knows this. Seems you don't know anything about it then.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Facts: Neither Libya, nor the DPRK has dropped nuclear bombs on cities full of civilians, unlike the USA. Neither Libya, nor the DPRK has occupied the land of its palestinian neighbours for 60+ years, while threatening anybody who dares NOT to look the other way with nuclear bombs, unlike the zionist entity and their american sockpuppets. Lybia has actually disarmed its WMD programme several years ago and the "Khan P-1" uranium enrichment centrifuge line it gave up to the USA has been secretly transferred to the Dimona A-bomb factory of the zionist entity, where it was used to develope the Stuxnet e-warfare worm, which tried to demolish Iran's peaceful nuclear programme via computer systems sabotage.
The USA and the zionist entity should be kicked out of the UN immediately and the world should stop bowing to the ground in front of the jewish moneybags, who consider themselves "chosen" and consider "goyim" a.k.a. all other human races as dirt of the soil.
Much of the world will either not ratify the International Criminal Court agreements or will never actually honor the obligations.
Likewise, the U.S. would not ratify it because of domestic legislation protecting Americans, because of valid concerns that the tribunals would be misused, and overall the benefits versus legal and other problems weights heavily on the side of never ratifying into it.
"It hurts the crediblity of the United Nations..."
The UN has credibility?
War of aggression is a war crime -- apparently ignorant Americans are unaware of this fact, and believe that it's only a war crime if you kill cute puppies.
And, of course, presidents are hardly alone among perpetrators of those -- there is Congress, Department of Defense and plenty of other organizations.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Given N Korea is at a disadvantage when it comes to WMDs and that they feel threatened by them, why should they NOT be the chairman? Their position would be far more secure if nobody had nuclear weapons.
PS for clem, the disarmament is based on how many obsolete weapons they're removing, the move from high-yield to low-yield tactical nukes (which have a worse immediate effect because the explosion and products don't go up to the high stratosphere and get spread in time and space). In terms of how much they've done compared how much they SAID they were doing, the USA is pretty crap.
This is no different than the UN human rights commission with such wondrous members like Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe, People's Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.
Time to offend someone
In other news, the employee day care center is now to be run by pedophiles...
The Iraq war was legalized by security council resolution--granted, they worded the resolution so that most of them could pretend to protest while the US could use it as pretext for invasion, but they went along with it, which effectively makes it legal under international law. (Either it was done b/c the US bribed everyone or because everyone knew the US would do it anyway and they didn't want the security council to lose legitimacy, but it *was* legal.) You could argue the whole security council were war criminals for going along with it, but that argument won't get you very far in the real world, much less in any international tribunals.
Also, wars wages for self-defense are not war crimes. Most of the people involved in the decision to wage war in Iraq saw it as a war of self-defense (The whole WMD thing), albeit a hell of a stretch for one. Such people are not war criminals, as military action for self-defense is specifically authorized in the Charter of the United Nations.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
And much of the world will, and it is helpful to have a framework in place to bring war crimes charges after regime change when local governments would otherwise give people a show trial at most.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
The Iraq war was legalized by security council resolution--granted, they worded the resolution so that most of them could pretend to protest while the US could use it as pretext for invasion, but they went along with it, which effectively makes it legal under international law.
1. And it's still war of aggression. UN is not authorized to pardon criminals.
2. Powell gave UN fake evidence of nonexistent Iraqi weapon development programs. That alone invalidates pretty much everything that came out of it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.