Qadaffy seemed to be mellowing in his old age, but he also seems to be completely losing it. I guess that’s what happens when your name has dozens of spellings, which nobody can settle on.
His speech was wacky, rambling, wide-ranging and unfocused - the type given by leaders with captive audiences. But, if you could stay awake, he managed to hide a lot of sense within it. Too bad he doesn’t have a better editor/PR man.
One security council seat for Europe, instead of Britain and France. Hard to argue with that unless you’re bothered it would promote Europe over nation states.
Permanent seat for Africa and ASEAN/east Asia. Reasonable.
Reduced veto powers on security council. Makes sense.
Implementation of general assembly votes. Why not?
Oh, and the JFK thing!
OoOoOooooOOOH and he’s coming to Canada! :aiyo:
[quote]++http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2009/09/24/nl-moammar-gadhafi-924.html#socialcomments
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi will visit Newfoundland next week, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed Thursday, but he can expect a chilly reception and a reprimand from Canada.
Gadhafi is making a one-day stopover in St. John’s on his way back to Libya from New York after his visit to the United Nations General Assembly, where he gave a 90-minute speech Wednesday.
“Prime Minister [Stephen] Harper has asked Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon to go to St. John’s and meet the Libyan leader,” Soudas wrote.
“Minister Cannon will voice Canada’s strong disapproval over the hero’s welcome organized for Abdelbasset Al Maghrahi, the man responsible for the Lockerbie terrorist bombing. It constituted an insult to all the victims who died, including Canadians.”
Late Thursday afternoon, Cannon told Radio-Canada reporters that that the federal government wants to make its position on Gadhafi’s visit clear.
“The incidents that took place years ago had Canadians losing their lives,” he said. " In no way shape or form does this government support terrorism, and we denounce it at every opportunity and that’s what we will be doing."
Newfoundland and Labrador government officials say no one from the province will welcome Gadhafi.
“We don’t have any comment, and no provincial officials will be meeting with him,” an official in Premier Danny Williams’s office told CBC News on Thursday.
St. John’s Mayor Dennis O’Keefe says he has no plans to meet with Gadhafi either, but he says Libya’s leader won’t be alone while he’s in Newfoundland.
O’Keefe says he’s heard that Gadhafi will be in the city with a delegation of 130 people.
“They are going to be dispersed around different hotels, and Col. Gadhafi would be looking for a separate site on which he wants to pitch a Bedouin tent,” said O’Keefe.
[/quote]
AIYO!
Let’s hope he has better luck pitching that harem tent in Canada than he did in the US.
This calls for a pitture of his bodyguards:
:lovestruck: If I were ever to be manhandled and roughed up by military-looking thugs, I would want it to be them doing the deed!
:lovestruck: If I were ever to be manhandled and roughed up by military-looking thugs, I would want it to be them doing the deed![/quote]
He has, I believe, 40 of them. And they are all virgins, so he says. :liar:
It’s good to be the king. :discodance:
[quote=“fruitloop”]His speech was wacky, rambling, wide-ranging and unfocused - the type given by leaders with captive audiences. But, if you could stay awake, he managed to hide a lot of sense within it. Too bad he doesn’t have a better editor/PR man.
One security council seat for Europe, instead of Britain and France. Hard to argue with that unless you’re bothered it would promote Europe over nation states.
Permanent seat for Africa and ASEAN/east Asia. Reasonable.
Reduced veto powers on security council. Makes sense.
Implementation of general assembly votes. Why not?
Oh, and the JFK thing![/quote]
I agree that Europe should get one seat. France shouldn’t have received a seat in the first place. They surrendered during WW2. Africa definitely shouldn’t get one as that entire continent was better off under colonialism, the one bright spark in most of that continent’s backward history. Keep U.S and A., Russia, and China. Replace Britain with Europe and France with India if we really want it based upon who has people, power, money and influence. Throw Brazil in there in a few years too.
The current veto powers are fucked up, but power definitely shouldn’t be spread around to every two bit third world dictatorship (which is why Russia and China actually shouldn’t have any veto powers). The mere fact that Libya is in the U.N. speaks volumes about what a fucked up organisation it is.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”][quote=“fruitloop”]His speech was wacky, rambling, wide-ranging and unfocused - the type given by leaders with captive audiences. But, if you could stay awake, he managed to hide a lot of sense within it. Too bad he doesn’t have a better editor/PR man.
One security council seat for Europe, instead of Britain and France. Hard to argue with that unless you’re bothered it would promote Europe over nation states.
Permanent seat for Africa and ASEAN/east Asia. Reasonable.
Reduced veto powers on security council. Makes sense.
Implementation of general assembly votes. Why not?
Oh, and the JFK thing![/quote]
I agree that Europe should get one seat. France shouldn’t have received a seat in the first place. They surrendered during WW2. Africa definitely shouldn’t get one as that entire continent was better off under colonialism, the one bright spark in most of that continent’s backward history. Keep U.S and A., Russia, and China. Replace Britain with Europe and France with India if we really want it based upon who has people, power, money and influence. Throw Brazil in there in a few years too.
The current veto powers are fucked up, but power definitely shouldn’t be spread around to every two bit third world dictatorship (which is why Russia and China actually shouldn’t have any veto powers). The mere fact that Libya is in the U.N. speaks volumes about what a fucked up organisation it is.[/quote]
Wow
No please tell me, how do you really feel about the UN?
Back to the topic thou, Splitting up the Swiss would be a great thing, then maybe the bloody foreigners could stop calling me Swiss, I’m from Sweden god damn it…
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
I agree that Europe should get one seat. France shouldn’t have received a seat in the first place. They surrendered during WW2. Africa definitely shouldn’t get one as that entire continent was better off under colonialism, the one bright spark in most of that continent’s backward history. Keep U.S and A., Russia, and China. Replace Britain with Europe and France with India if we really want it based upon who has people, power, money and influence. Throw Brazil in there in a few years too.
The current veto powers are fucked up, but power definitely shouldn’t be spread around to every two bit third world dictatorship (which is why Russia and China actually shouldn’t have any veto powers). The mere fact that Libya is in the U.N. speaks volumes about what a fucked up organisation it is.[/quote]
I think the general idea of the UN was to include everyone (all recognised states), good or bad. Especially the bad, come to think of it. If you threw people out every time they killed civilians of enemy powers, well, there wouldn’t be many members left.
The whole point is that every country, no matter how good or evil, is a member. (UN for Taiwan!! 
:p)
I do agree with revising the veto structure of the Security Council.
So (almost) every country is a member. Great. This serves what purpose exactly (other than to be a self-serving bureaucracy), since the U.N. seems to have no power to rein in the bad countries?
A forum open to everyone to set the world to rights.
Why should brutal, genocidal dictators be allowed to sit at the table with the good leaders of the world? The whole thing is a flawed concept.
Lets hope the UN does what it was formed to do and that is keep the countries concerned in check!
As for Gadafi…has anyone bothered looking in his back yard for fellow terrorist Bin Ladin? look under his tent flaps i am sure you will find him there.
Point of interest, Gadafi has a magnificent palace that is not lived in! he prefers to live in a huge luxurious tent in his back yard…and they let this guy be the AU leader!!! :loco:
feck the Swiss.
how many divisions do they have?
Firstly, who’s to judge who the good guys are? That would make it a self selecting club and there are plenty of those such as the EU, G7, NATO etc based on various criteria and concepts. The point of the UN is to be universal, representing the all peoples of the world. The UN would have no moral authority to criticise, sanction or intervene in countries that were not members. That’s the point. Members have signed up to something and can/should be held to account if they don’t meet those commitments.
Of course, being universal reduces the likelihood of unanimity.
Secondly, if we only met on the battlefield, there would be more wars. It’s good to talk. Talking to your enemies saves lives and solves problems.
Aside from grand geo-politics, the UN quietly does a lot of good work in development etc.
Ghaddaffi’s not coming to Canada anymore.
Snubbed by Ghadaffy. Screw that guy. :raspberry:
Firstly, who’s to judge who the good guys are? That would make it a self selecting club and there are plenty of those such as the EU, G7, NATO etc based on various criteria and concepts. The point of the UN is to be universal, representing the all peoples of the world. The UN would have no moral authority to criticise, sanction or intervene in countries that were not members. That’s the point. Members have signed up to something and can/should be held to account if they don’t meet those commitments.[/quote]
I think we can work out who the good guys are and who aren’t quite easily. There are already several organisations that rank countries based upon a whole lot of scales from media freedom to human rights abuses to various indices of standard of living and health. It’s disingenuous to pretend that we can’t distinguish Finland from Zimbabwe and that Robert Mugabe should be afforded anywhere near the same level of say as the leader of Finland (whomever that is).
As to representing all people of the world… Such as the Tibetans or Taiwanese? How about the multitude of minorities living within states all over the world? How exactly are they represented?
How exactly does the U.N. show any moral authority or intervene in countries that are members now? Because it has done a great job in everything from the Sudan to Rwanda, Yugoslavia to Israel, right?
Do you know how many people have died post-WW2 under all the despotic regimes? Do you know how many wars there have been post-WW2? There are several raging at the moment. The U.N. has done very little in preventing bloodshed.
Firstly, I dispute whether the various U.N. agencies are actually the most efficient at what they do, or whether NGOs do a better job. Secondly, even if the U.N. agencies do a fantastic job, what does any of that have to do with a super-national government? The two could quite easily be divorced. Just because Bono or Bill Gates hand out some money and help people doesn’t mean we need to make them our un-elected leaders or that we need some unwieldy organisation that is a giant cocktail circuit for the world’s greatest rogues.
In order to proclaim who the good guys are, you need universal recognition. Otherwise your judgements are worthless and they can equally well call you the bad guys. “Everyone knows the Fins are harmless, bless their cotton socks” doesn’t cut the mustard. Of course we all know their government is “nicer” than Mugabe’s but any statement of that carries more weight if pronounced by an organisation of which all are members.
Minorities? They’re represented by their member states. Afro-Carribeans, Indians, Chinese etc British Citizens are represented by the United Kingdom. As Black Americans are by the USA. Ethnic minorities are only an issue in this sense when they live in states based upon ethnicity rather than nationality. If they’re a minority seeking independence, the hard fact is that until they gain it, they’re represented by the state that controls them. Too bad Scots, Welsh, Cornish, Manx and Northern Irish Catholics.
It’s had failures and it’s had successes. Many of its failures have been due to veto powers or stalling.
Whether there would have been more or less conflicts without the UN is unprovable, speculation. There have been many wars, proxy-wars and conflicts since 1945. But there has been no repeat of the global conflagration. By definition diplomacy failed in those cases but the continued existence of war is not an argument for the end of diplomacy.
The UN is explicitly not a supra-national government. It’s an organisation of sovereign member states that joined freely and are free to leave at any time. They judge it is in their interest to stay in.
You seem to be saying that it’s necessary for the whole world to call out a dictator. Clearly, it’s not in the interests of all the other dictators to call out one of their kind, which is why we see African leaders consistently mute or tacitly supporting Mugabe, for instance. It’s also why the five countries with veto powers play their own similar games in supporting their “allies”. Human rights don’t exist or not exist based upon whether everyone, including the people committing the violations, are on board with the idea. What sort of perverse moral world are you avocating where the wolf has to condemn himself or those of his pack before we can chastise him for eating the sheep? Of course that’s never going to happen, but does that mean then that the wolf (and his pack) is actually not bad for eating the sheep?
No, Tibetans, Uighurs and Taiwanese are not represented by China. The first two most definitely don’t want to be part of China, but lack the ability to break away. Taiwan exists in some quasi-status, but sees itself as a separate entity. People on the receiving end of genocide in the Darfur region of the Sudan are not represented by the Sudanese government, and we shouldn’t recognise the Sudanese government as either 1) representative of people it’s committing genocide against and, 2) morally or diplomatically equal to many other nations that don’t commit genocide.
Of course. It’s a major problem with the U.N. that those with veto powers can block for all sorts of their own reasons, but this would hardly be improved if two despotic dictatorships could out-vote one decent country. I would argue that the inability to stop dozens of conflicts all over the world is hardly a mixture of failure and success, but an abject failure.
I would suggest that the main reason for a lack of a WW3 had less to do with the U.N. and more to do with direct communications between the Soviet Union and the United States, and their policies of M.O.D. Technology has essentially prevented the world’s very powerful nations from going to war (as India and Pakistan may have by now, for instance) as they would have prior to the Nuclear Age. It has nothing to do with the U.N.
Likewise, I wasn’t talking about hypothetical wars. I was indeed talking about the many wars that have actually happened, as well as the ethnic cleansing and internal issues, that the U.N. has stood back and let happen. Where was the U.N. when Pol Pot was tearing Cambodia apart, for instance? What moral authority does the U.N. exercise over Burma, other than to agree on a strongly-worded tut-tut between the rounds of banana daiquiris and general sessions with the diplomats’ snouts in the trough? Wouldn’t we all like to work at the U.N. where we could spend other people’s money and be completely unaccountable for anything? Seriously, what do these guys do that isn’t covered by either diplomats (who are already on a cushy number) from one country to another or by NGOs? So Gaddafi gets up and wants to abolish Switzerland and a whole bunch of nodding or shaking heads hear him out before the next caviar dinner. Fan-bloody-tastic, but what does any of that have to do with anything outside of The Twilight Zone? In any other context it would be regarded as epic comedy, not some serious meeting to discuss all of humanity’s greatest challenges, hopes and fears.
Of course it’s a supra-national government. It has many of the same kind of agencies and attempts to carry out many of the same projects and agendas (such as providing education, health, military forces, etc.) as national governments. It’s just not a very effective one because various factions within that government constantly block each other and the U.N. lacks the courage to fire bullets. (Do their peacekeepers even have live ammunition?)
Human rights exist because humans say they do. They didn’t exist 100,000 years ago. Ideas of them change. Unless you believe they are an eternal truth revealed by God. So the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a standard we have set ourselves, an ambitious standard that no nation can claim to have fulfilled entirely, but a standard by which we consent to be measured. The strength of this standard is that it is universal. I believe in ambitious goals, that may take time to fulfil.
Theoretically, yes they are. That’s how it works. Just like I may be represented in Parliament by an MP who I despise and who may even despise me.
It’s a lot more than dozens. More like hundreds.
You’re right. Communication between the super-powers helped. Some of that was through the UN. But the point is general, communication helps.
Mutually Assured Destruction, despite being mad, may have played its part in preventing direct, all-out war.
The UN is international, not supra-national. It may be analogous to an international parliament, with agencies. But not to a global, supra-national government. There are very many organisations of global governance, including the UN, but not government. There is a difference.