Useless UN

[Anonymous]

d US has vetoed a security council resolution sponsored by syria. the gist of d resolution was that israel shdnt try to exile arafat. i think all d poor, weak countries shd get out of bodies like d UN, IBRD, WTO n co. what benefit do they get form them. after all d UN couldnt stop d US running amok in Indochina. it cant enforce d resolutions Israel is flouting so blatantly etc etc. all d ambassadors do is talk n condemn and then.... that's all. they dont even look sad. who has read "lords of poverty" or something like that. its about d profligacy of world bodies.

[lionger]

My friend, I know the palestine issue can excite passions big time, but don't let this goad u into thinking the U.N. is no good. Unfortunately, the UN will always continue to falter on highly polarised issues which directly involve one or more of the 'big 5' powers of the Security Council - where the power really lies. However the UN is absolutely invauable as concerns humanitarian and social work; even perhaps in the area of nation-building. With the rising count of GI deaths in Iraq since the 'end of hostilities' in April, the US is beginning to realize the reason y ppl across the world opposed any military action w/out full UN support and participation. The UN may not be able to help the palestinian muslims now, however it is capable of doing a world of good in Iraq, if given a chance of course.

[al_hamza]

UN is useless, we have no muslim nation on the 5power lobby, as such we cant voice out our concerns, therefore, its a waste of time and money plus brains to go for UN,

[lionger]

ah-ah al hamza, that is your reason? I know you're saying that because the Iraq issue. Oya tell me, which muslim country do u think should be among the big 5 and why? What would that country have done on the Iraq issue that France, Russia and China did not do? Would they have attacked the U.S. for bypassing the UN?

Just b/c the US can bypass the UN  does not make the latter completely useless. In fact, there isn't much more than a moral obligation to abide by resolutions that the UN passes. Thus many other countries are guilty of the same crime. Syria itself, currently president of the Security Council and author of the reso in question, has been in blatant violation of resolution 520 for more that 20 years, in regard to its military activities in Lebanon. Israel also ignored the same reso until 1999; however, Israel got the heat for it; Syria did not. By natural logic, that's a double standard. Even Nigeria has refused to accept the ICJ's ruling that gave Bakassi to Cameroon, despite having said b4 the ruling that they would abide by it. Enforcing resolutions by means of punishment can get very tricky; partly b/c the idea of national sovereignty is highly regarded (at least in the Charter :P) by the UN.

Finally, as an example of the UN's abilities when the big 5's interests do not come into play: The UN can and should do for your Kashmir what it did for East Timor i.e. self-determination. That has not happened for over 50 yrs and the blame must lie squarely on India and to a much lesser extent Pakistan.

[Anonymous]

i am not against d un cos of religion but cos we poor countries r always getting shafted. n if a un resolutions only work when one of d big 5 isnt concerned then what is d use? as concerns humanitarian aid, check out the record of aid agencies in ethiopia n somalia. as for peacekeeping, where has it succesfully kept d peace? cyprus, bosnia or iraq. there can be no multilateralism where there is no equality.

[Anonymous]

oh yeah lionger. what about nation building in iraq? to help white men rape d country or to split it into statelets?

[lionger]

Bashir,

I feel u on the first point, but i think the WTO, IMF, other economic bodies, the advanced world and their multinational corporations (not to mention the govts of the third world) should bear more of the responsibility for the lack of equity in free trade and globalization.

And i definitely agree w/ u on the big 5. In fact, I think the veto power should be scrapped and instead, their votes should be weighted i.e. 1 big 5 vote counts for 2 votes, or something like that. Their power should remain somewhat, cuz these r the countries that will contribute the most to peacekeeping. I also believe that the no. of such countries should be increased or at least there should be some sort of rotation. When was the last time China contributed to any peace force?

I'm certainly not saying that the UN is perfect. THere are certain serious flaws that exist, like the veto power; also its poor organization which leads to money loss. In fact, the US refused to pay its dues to the UN for a long time over this valid point. For this reason, the UN is hardly financially sound, and this has hampered its humanitarian work a great deal. However, we should not throw away the baby with the bath water. You mentioned cyprus and bosnia. Tell me bashir, if not UN intervention, what is the alternative? In both cases civil war, caused by neighboring countries! You see, almost all countries in the world are guilty of undermining the UN, not just the big 5. Several resolutions are passed ever yr, n some of them never come to fruition cuz states ignore them. And when was the last time you heard of bosnia and cyprus in the news? UN intervention is by no means the perfect solution, but when regional powers r apathetic or infact the problem, that is the only alternative.

Iraq is a diff situation, I think. First of all, the U.S. badly damaged the UN's worth by attacking Iraq in the first place. Now they face a barrage of terrorist attacks, which is in fact a big shame cuz it is not good for the Iraqis ppl. Personally I find the attacks very distasteful, esp. the ones directed to the UN. Frankly, if they could not fight like this against Saddam, then y against the US? The only good thing that has come out of this is that the U.S. is now open to more UN involvement. Obviously, if the UN and US packed their bags and left rt now, there would be a serious crisis, and they would be blamed for leaving too early. The point is that instead of us to wait (and even wish) for them to fail n for the whole place to disintegrate so we can score a worthless point, we should be praying that they succeed at least for the sake of the innocent Iraqi ppl.

[Anonymous]

i dont think d us is in iraq cos they care about the plight of the iraqis. if they are so kind,why d footdragging over liberia and perennial palestine? i mentioned cyprus cos d un has been "keeping d peace there since like... it was born." as for bosnia, they had to call in nato to kill anything that moved b/4 they achieved peace. about iraqis fighting d un n d us. u know d story of d sanctions? 3000 iraqi children fighting everyday "promise us if we give u oil u will give us food and then when we pump the oil u hold d food up?" d us bombed dams, telecoms, hospitals  roads over 10 years because their oil supply was threatened. if the us succeeds in iraq, iraq will become another phillipines.
as for d us being more open to un help. that is not becos they r being generous. its cos
1. their troops r overstretched. they have troops in korea, germany, afghanistan, iraq. those r the places i am sure of now.
2. its costing money. am sure u know that bush cut taxes n is raising finance by borrowing therefore increasing the budget deficit. he is just trying to cut costs to improve his elections. also the old men dont want iraq to turn into a vietnam. u know vietnam ate up the gold reserves d us had saved after ww2. thereby seriously undermining american liquidity.

as for poor countries being more responsible for equity in global trade. u know historical and structural inequalities? they r very hard to reverse. n this is the first time they r so blatant n lopsided. besides how can poor countries have clout when rich countries have the carrot, d stick, d meat n d knife?
d world financial orgs r well...part of d plot to screw poor blackie n anyone not of anglosaxon stock. look at argentina n russia. hell look at southeast asia n d remedies  imf gave them in the late 90s. malaysia balked n they were the first to recover. i think now they have one of the fastest growing n strongest economies in the region.
u know am happy that cancun round of wto failed. read up uruguay round n see how blatant d shafting was.
my fingers r on fire. this is d longest i have ever typed here. looking forward to ur reply.

[ummita]

Oga Bash......b a member!!!

[al_hamza]

let put it this way lionger,
if the US were attacked, wouldnt UK come to its help?
if Germany were to be attacked, wouldnt the french come to help?
If China was to be attacked, wouldnt russia come into scene?

you see you completely refuse to accept general truths,
i am sure if newton was a muslim you'd say all his laws are total lies, or if your white masters accepted that newton was right, you'd probably say king louis IV was the one that invented the laws and newton actually stole them,

you see, syria's bieng in lebanon is highly important, because left on thier own, Hizbullah will face real hard time in Lebanon, Syria is like a "big brother" the way the US is a "big brother" in south korea, thankyou, infact this is a very good example, though some south koreans hate the US presence, the gov continues to support US, though the people speak the same language, Israel has no right to exist (that is if you leave your white enslaved mind apart for a while) and lebanese are arabs and have a good number of palestini refugees, ofcourse by not fighting they cant throw out israel can they?  so israel was thrown out (not forced to pull out) and syria is allowed to stay, the UN cant do anything because the lebanese are relaxed and dont mind the presense, if they did, The white people you love so much would have liberated it by now! ESPECIALLY AFTER ENTERING THE IRAQ WAR

and as for a permanent muslim member, i would like Saudi to play the role,
so lionger, got the point?
or do you still believe Syria should pull out?

[al_hamza]

As for the bakassi issue,
Obj flew to paris (cos he felt like) and signed a treaty with cameroum that Nigeria would accept the outcome of Bakassi case, and the Court awarded bakassi to cameroun, any question?
well lets see the history of french and nigerian/camerouian diplomacy,
France helps camerous acquire state of the art weaponry which i will say we dont have, i repeat we DONT HAVE france has given cameroun helicopters for patrol along nigerian borders,
2) France was the first country to accept Biafra, and was first to have diplomatic ties though secret (go gamji and read some history) France also helped Biafran army with weapons so that our "DEAR NATION" could be torn into pieces.

Probably the only thing cameroun is scared of is the Nigerian strategy of importing arms and airforce (like during da civil war we had egyptian pilots) which Nigeria can generously afford and cameroun cant, come on they export only timber!

so lionger, after bakassi, probably we will have Niger knocking at sokoto, claiming it belonged to them,
oh maybe you'd be ready to give that, so its a useless question,
lets say, Republique Du Benin said Ogun belonged to them, would you then be ready to give it away if, the french backed international court favors Benin?

[Anonymous]

i doubt if russia wd help china or france help germany. china gave ussr egg on its face over communism. d chinese claimed that their own brand of communism was purer or somthing like that. putin is part of d old guard. besides what wd they gain? a billion people when they cant take good care of the 300 million they have. france n germany have been enemies since d nineteen bakowa. they were at each others throats for about half d 20th century. both israel n syria entered lebanon for their own selfish ends. bakassi. for god's sake its just a tiny piece of land. nigeria is supposed to be a big brother. d borders were drawn by white men. if u look hard enough u'll find someone playing off nigeria n cameroon.
ummita tnx. i will sign up.

[lionger]

I concur w/ ummita, bash u should consider joining.

Actually I agree w/ pretty much everything u said. I hope I did not insinuate in any way that the US was going in there for moral reasons. Everybody knows it was about oil.Thus I definitely agree 100% with the reasons u gave for US asking the UN for help. In fact I said that it was also cuz of the continuous terrorist attacks, so how could I agree that it was out of generousity?

Your points on the iraq embargo are also well taken. I think its one of the biggest disgraces to the UN and another example of y it needs serious reform if it wants to remain relevant in ?this century. There may be excuses for its placement in the first place, one being the Gulf War, and also the fact that the idea of 'smart sanctions' was not known then. Still every life needlessly lost is a shame.

On Bosnia and Cyprus: Your point on Bosnia is well taken. The UN did not do a good job there; but i believe important lessons were learned from that. On the other hand, Cyprus and Kosovo will prolly remain a ward of the UN forever, until the regional powers (Greece and Turkey, Serbia and Albania) decide to act in the interests of peace rather than their own selfish interests. We can't blame the UN for incompetence and ignore the fact that the causes of the problem in the first place are still undermining its work.

On the poor countries: once again I am in total agreement. Argentina's problem did not start today, infact it started in 1930. However, let's look at the solution, n I'm going to focus of Africa here. Some of of us seem to say that the 'white man' should simply step in, give third world countries plenty money and bring them up to par w/ the West. Why would they want to do that? I guess one could argue that the West does owe us such ?a favor, what with colonialism and all. But still, wouldn't we prefer that we came out of the gutter by our sheer will and hardwork and at least DESERVE (like malaysia n other southeast asian countries) some sort of serious attention and help? U see, I believe that Africa has all the natural resources and potential to bring itself to that state, but that has not happened primarily because we lack responsible leadership and economic steel. We r still fighting amongst ourselves, and won't exploit our resources to the fullest due to our laziness. For this reason I feel it is necessary to continue playing devil's advocate in a small way; cuz we continue blaming the West for our problems but r not ready to admit that we r our own biggest enemies. I said this b4 on the thread about shell atrocities: the Asian economic powerhouses do not have ANY resources to boast of, unlike we do. However, they have, thru sheer hardwork and sweat, built up big electronic and automobile industries which constantly shame the West. S. korea's Pohang Steel plant and Nigeria's Ajaokuta steel project both started at the same time; today the Pohang steel plant is the world's biggest steel producer and exporter; what happened to our project? Yes the Far East was not colonized to the extent that Africa suffered but that is a lame excuse. Until we start sowing, we won't reap. How can we rightfully blame the white man for economic rascism, when tribalism is alive and well in our hearts? That's the way I feel about it.

Nevertheless, globalization in some ways an evil to us. Its a good thing that there's always a ruckus created around WTO meets, maybe that will help push the idea of 'fair trade' instead of ?'free trade' more.

[lionger]

Oya al hamza, na ur turn! though u have said so much that to give an complete reply would be a diversion from the topic..

if the US were attacked, wouldnt UK come to its help?
if Germany were to be attacked, wouldnt the french come to help?
If China was to be attacked, wouldnt russia come into the scene?

Yes to the first two; but not so sure on russia and china: these guys hated hated each other during the cold war when they were both communist. read bashir's latest post.
Oya ansa kweshon: why didn't S. Arabia or any of the other 'muslim countries' attack the US when it attacked Afghanistan and Iraq? Surely the US could not have been too big a villain for them to stop as the afghani mujaheedin defeated the soviet union in the 80s singlehandedly by God's help (and i derive this from something u said earlier on this board).

you see you completely refuse to accept general truths,
i am sure if newton was a muslim you'd say all his laws are total lies, or if your white masters accepted that newton was right, you'd probably say king louis IV was the one that invented the laws and newton actually stole them,

I have no idea what 'general truth' u r going on about here. However, it is one of your classic raves about me being an anti-muslim crusader, KKK supporter and lover of white men. Of course I love white ppl, y should I hate them? As a christian I ought to love my enemies. To the best of my abilities, I do not hate any race or ethnic group. I have to ask, al hamza, do u hate white ppl? U seem to indicate that. And hatred of any race is called racism.

you see, syria's being in lebanon is highly important, because left on thier own, Hizbullah will face real hard time in Lebanon, Syria is like a "big brother" the way the US is a "big brother" in south korea, thank you, infact this is a very good example, though some south koreans hate the US presence, the gov continues to support US, though the people speak the same language, Israel has no right to exist (that is if you leave your white enslaved mind apart for a while) and lebanese are arabs and have a good number of palestini refugees, ofcourse by not fighting they cant throw out israel can they? ?so israel was thrown out (not forced to pull out) and syria is allowed to stay, the UN cant do anything because the lebanese are relaxed and dont mind the presense, if they did, The white people you love so much would have liberated it by now! ESPECIALLY AFTER ENTERING THE IRAQ WAR

bashir's latest response is enough in this respect. I said that BOTH Syria and Israel violated resolution 520 which requested that all foreign countries pull their armies out of Lebanon. Israel finally pulled out under the diplomatic Ehud Barak (not forced out like u said) a couple of yrs ago, so y is Syria still there? Your argument does not hold in this respect. Who told u the lebanese don't mind the presence?
Your U.S.- korea analogy is thus also off the mark. There r those who want the U.S. to leave (mostly the new generation) and those who want them to stay (the old generation). Judging by ur statement of the two koreas speaking the same language, i wonder if u know y the peninsula is separated in the first place.

As for the bakassi issue, ?
Obj flew to paris (cos he felt like) and signed a treaty with cameroum that Nigeria would accept the outcome of Bakassi case, and the Court awarded bakassi to cameroun, any question?
well lets see the history of french and nigerian/camerouian diplomacy,
France helps camerous acquire state of the art weaponry which i will say we dont have, i repeat we DONT HAVE france has given cameroun helicopters for patrol along nigerian borders ....Probably the only thing cameroun is scared of is the Nigerian strategy of importing arms and airforce (like during da civil war we had egyptian pilots) which Nigeria can generously afford and cameroun cant, come on they export only timber!

so lionger, after bakassi, probably we will have Niger knocking at sokoto, claiming it belonged to them,

Once again I concur w/ bashir's take on bakassi. Though I infact believe that the indigenes r Nigerians, we r only making noice cuz they have oil. What have we done w/ the oil we have? This is part of the laziness I was talking about in earlier posts. We r not going to use the Bakassi oil for development, so by all means Cameroon can have it. Sometimes I wish we did not have any oil reserves at all!

2) France was the first country to accept Biafra, and was first to have diplomatic ties though secret (go gamji and read some history) France also helped Biafran army with weapons so that our "DEAR NATION" could be torn into pieces.

Well this is another topic altogether. Biafra would have torn Nigeria to pieces? Boy u need to bone up big-time on Nigerian history. No need going into the details but I'm sure someone who has gone as far as supporting the actions of terrorist groups against the US and Israel, and freedom for indian-controlled kashmir - surely someone like u should be able to see a legit premise for Biafra.

[Anonymous]

bravo lionger. d white man wont solve anybody's problems. d ones who caused d problem r all dead. besides there is no mileage in blaming anyone for one's troubles.