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US Defunds UNESCO After Palestine Vote
gzipped_tar writes "The U.S. withdrew funding after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's Palestine membership vote yesterday. The decision was triggered by a 1994 US law that requires financial ties to be cut with any UN agency that accords the Palestinians full membership. As Palestine actively pursues entrance to other UN agencies, the defunding list could grow. Interestingly, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) could also be among Palestine's next target, and U.S. is the big supporter of WIPO. A much more disturbing scenario is Palestine joining the International Atomic Energy Agency, cutting American funding to the organization that monitors nuclear proliferation in states like Iran."
UNESCO is one of the most highly regarded and wide-spread agencies for cultural preservation in the World. There is a fundamental flaw in a law predicating U.S. contributions to the United Nations and U.N. affiliates on their members voting a certain way. UNESCO does not control its members and how they vote.
The fact that a majority of UNESCO members want to grant admission to a Palestinian state is no reason for the U.S. to "pick up its marbles and go home." UNESCO would be better with U.S. participation. The U.S. would be better off by participating in UNESCO.
This law should be repealed before the US has removed itself from every UN organization in the world.
That's because you're using the wrong definition of "terror organizations". You're probably thinking it means "people who target and kill large numbers of civilians, typically in order to push a geopolitical agenda".
But the definition of "terror organizations" used by major news outlets, including the New York Times, is "People who use violence to oppose the United States and/or Israel". That, by definition, means the US can't support terror organizations. Also, note that the same organization that were "freedom fighters" becomes a "terror organization" as soon as they switch from fighting the USSR to fighting the US.
I am officially gone from
This is an excellent news for Unesco, It did leave it alone from 1984 till 2002/3 and this was mutch better than the years between 2003 and Now.
First it will remove a large cadre of US employees from Unesco staff, and since there is a total disconnect between the US point of view on education and culture and the rest of the world it will enable the Unesco to work more efficiently without having to focus on making large american corporations and large US private universities happy.
It also shows how spitefull the current administration is (well the other party would probably do the same), influence at the unesco is largelly dependent on the size of each state contribution, so the US with 22% would have buried the palestinian, in practice maybe one or two managers and at most half a dozen palestinian employees will be hired, and probably mostly active in some cultural history preservation task in the middle east.
The US could have said publicly that the vote of Unesco is not binding for them, and that the officially "protest" the cooptation of a non state as a full member, but that they would go on working with Unesco to further cultural, etc....
But no, they have to "punish" the UN, well certainly there are a lot of undemocratic and unsavory regime who have influence there, but remember many are "allies" of the US, and there is no easy way to get people of the world represented.
To those who think that the US should "remove itself from the UN", just remember that this would in practice mean that "big countries" would unilaterally govern by "divide and conquer", so in the "best (from US point of view) case" you would have an "imperial republic" leading the world by having a small minority (only about 5% of the world population are US citizens) vote for everybody else, in the more likely case you would have the Communist Party of China ruling the world... (US waste of money in the financial system created the crisis which now pushes the European to borrow money from the PRC, how long do you think it will take till you have to pay the interests ?).
So meanwhile thank you very much leaving the Unesco alone...
Its funny how there is so much concern for the lack of funding that may result from this. But there is 0 concern that the Palestinian organization/ terrorist groups (aka Hamas) that make up their government are not forced to comply with the standards established by the organization. It supposed to support peace, freedom right and understanding. I didn't know supporting suicide bombings was a plus on the application. The bottom line is just a couple of weeks ago the Palestinians cheered many returned from jail for committing unspeakable acts of murder on civilians and the UN member countries (most of which are run by thuggish dictators) looked the other way. The UN has a long history of antisemitism, from the Durban conference to multiple other examples. The US foots far too much of the bill for these organizations as it is. If they want to continue in their racist ways, it shouldn't be on our dime. PS this isn't just for new projects, UNSECO won't get another dime going forward. Other agencies should keep this in mind before supporting a group on multiple terrorist list (Hamas) with a full membership in a international body.
Please grant Palestine full membership in WIPO, preferably yesterday.
Thinking Israel is no better than all the other fuckers over there in the armpit of the world is hardly antisemitism.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
The one thing that pisses me off more than Jew haters are the people who consistently play the antisemitism card.
If I don't agree with one bonehead decision from Israel, it's because it's a bonehead decision.
If I think Avigdor Lieberman is an asshole, it really is because he's an asshole.
I couldn't care less about religion.
AFAICT, the peace process is the least of the issues involved here. UNESCO handles world heritage sites - y'know, like Pompeii which suffered two major collapses in the last week or so due to incompetent maintenance and a lack of funds. The money the Palestinians want is, according to them, going to go to a 5th century church (which is properly World Heritage) that is suffering from horrific maintenance issues and may well collapse without proper backing.
From the NERD perspective, 30% loss of money = 30% loss of World Heritage. That's a damn lot of history that had been, well, damned.
What happens between Israel and the Palestinians is, in historical terms and geographical terms, insignificant. Even if you consider the entire history of the entire region plus the rest of the Fertile Crescent, it is a pathetic 3,500 years and a trivial geographical space. It's NOTHING. The US' action has put into danger historical sites that are 70,000 years old - 20 TIMES as old as the entire recorded history for the Middle East - across an entire planet!
If you want to talk peace processes, then the Irish "Troubles" are recorded as having spanned 5,000 years and involved much of Europe and the US - twice the time the Middle East has even had issues and again many times the area. That was NOT solved by defunding the UN but WAS solved by all parties accepting that peaceful settlements were the way to go. The Basque issue, a mere 30 times older than modern Israel though younger than there have been conflicts in the region, was ALSO recently solved by an increase in mutual understanding and mutual efforts to end the futility cycle. Do you seriously think that either would have be settled today if there had been a blockade on assistance or tolerance of any kind? ESPECIALLY if that blockade had been on people completely unrelated to the parties involved?
(Would the IRA really have stopped shooting if Britain had decided to bomb the Colosseum in Rome in retaliation for the US sending a senator to Ireland? No? That's the practical upshot of what is taking place, so if the logic of such a move is inherently flawed then substituting in the current participants won't make the logic any better.)
Look, I fully understand Israel's insecurity and fears, and I respect that it has those for good reason, but nowhere in the history of humanity has anyone solved such issues by taking revenge on innocent third parties. I can't even recall any time in the history of humanity where anyone has solved such issued by taking revenge on those actually involved. If you want peace, you are going to have to do something that works. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, expecting different results. Insanity won't help Israel be safer.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
How about 8,000 rockets launched into Israel in the last 10 years?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel
Or blowing up a school bus full of kids:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avivim_school_bus_massacre
Or hundreds of other attacks on unarmed civilians.
I'm not trying to establish moral equivalence or paint them as the sole bad guys or any other kind of oversimplification. I'm just trying to point out that if you're not aware of why the Palestinians are regarded with deep suspicion, then you really don't know anything at all about the nature of the conflict.
The Palestinians are hoisting the U.S by it's own petard. The U.S. government passed the 1994 law as a "do what we say or else" measure, under the false belief that this would force the UN to follow U.S. policy. Instead, the Palestinians are being admitted to UN agencies anway, and we're cutting our own throat automatically.
It's not the Palestinians who should be worried.
All about me
Under the Symington Amendment, we're not allowed to give aide to nuclear nations who won't sign onto the NTP. They get around the legality of it, with a don't ask, don't tell policy. But everyone knows Israel has nukes, so it really is a flagrant violation of US law.
... and exactly who is pointing a gun at your goverment head to make it waste all those billions in defense? The american military industry, that is who; now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
I actually spent several summers working in Israel, and regularly visited the West Bank. Couldn't get access to Gaza though.
As for your questions: The West Bank and (especially) Gaza are effectively light-duty concentration camps. (Not dedicated, but high-density with low access to food, water, sanitation, or jobs.) Mass graves tend to draw attention. (And direct killing isn't the system being used here.) The ~10% of the Knesset (none of whom are Palestinian: they have to be Israeli) aren't a major political force of their own. And the random police checks, and the requirement that every Palestinian who wants to enter Israel (which means any of them who want to leave their home town for any reason...) register for travel papers, in person, every year, would be similar in effect.
Of course, a closer parallel would be with aparthied-era South Africa.
'Sensible' is a curse word.