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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?
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 world is just one big joke. Those of you who are still taking it seriously just didn't get the punchline
20 years ago.
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.
The US is reducing its nuclear forces, including massive reductions (a large majority of its total nuclear arsenal) since 1991, while fielding no new warhead designs or nuclear delivery systems. Or were you referring to the Russian Federation, which has reduced its total number of warheads while continuing to actively develop new nuclear first-strike platforms, like the RS-24 and the Bulava?
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!
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.
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