2006 December archive

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 04:27:18

| Sunday 10th December 2006 5:27CST | → 0 Comments |

Celebrate International Human Rights Day.

We went to visit my mother yesterday, to drop off Xmas presents. Her central heating has broken so conversation took place in the midst of the ambient drone of fan heaters.

A favourite pastime of neocons and other right-wingers is thinking up a replacement for the United Nations. The Adam ~~Smug~~ Smith Institute has had a go and its ideas are both sadly predictable and equally unworkable, if not dangerous.

As usual, it’s something along the lines of the ‘Coalition of Democracies’, though A.Smug feels a second criterion is required - that of being a true free-market economy. However, to dismiss the usual claims:

Such a coalition would have only a fraction of the current members so have considerably less legitimacy in the eyes of the world (despite not always succeeding, the UN at least tries to demonstrate legitimacy in the world under the ‘have them in the tent p*ssing out’ principle). If any of those countries, or say the major ones, tried to intervene in any conflict with military force - they would most likely be seen as the agressors rather than the liberators
Even if it was only, say, fifty members and there were all democracies the larger countries would be wholely against true one country, one vote representation and certain ones would vie for a veto over all peace and security issues. Hardly properly representitive (and I’m sure they’d still want some sort of veto even if voting was based on population or geographic area)
One of the conceits of democracies is that they believe human rights abuses just can’t happen in their countries. Consequently you would get a complete whitewash when it comes to investigations of charges against any of the major members. Remind me again which superpower runs a concentration camp and engages in torture by proxy that violate countless international human rights norms? ‘Hypocracy’ would become an oft-used word.
Finally, the last card played by neocons is the Oil For Food scandal. They claim this proves the UN is institutionally corrupt. Well, aside from talk of presidental voting anomalies, the OfF programme was actually overseen by the Security Council 661 committee and, courtesy of UN Dispatch: The U.S., through its Permanent Seat on the UN Security Council, had a representative on the 661 Committee, which gave them veto power over all contracts, during the entire duration of the Oil-for-Food Program.

Their ideas are as bankrupt as the US ambassador to the UN who is now history with, I would suspect, few regrets from the other 191 countries.

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 11:15:06

| Sunday 3rd December 2006 12:15CST | → 0 Comments |

Purchasing of xmas presents is almost complete - that’s what happens when I outsource it to Terry, who needed something to take his mind off teeth issues. However he’s going to see a specialist tomorrow at the Hospital.

He’s been rather lower over recent days over the whole affair so yesterday we went to Leith Hill to see the tower and beautiul views of Surrey that can be seen from the top of it. Afterwards, we wandered into Dorking for lunch and some shopping.

He’s also put up the xmas decorations at home (refusing to do so before the 1st December, which is fine by me) and at work. He went out (with Maggie) and got a real tree and many decorations, installed it (on my floor, near to me) and decorated it. Not only that, he’s been roped in to provide table decorations for the company Christmas party, which is coming up on the 16th. Seasonal horror.

Oh, and this doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know: Britain’s special relationship ‘just a myth’. Funny that everyone in the US, including each and every government, and everyone in Europe and everyone in this country realised this long ago apart from Blair, various cronies and the Tory party. Like religion, it must be the credo consolans principle and they all long for the geo-political simplicity of the Cold War.