I'm the sort of man who likes to give credit where credit is deserved, and it is in this exact spirit that I applaud Barack Obama for supporting a U.S. boycott of the United Nations Racism Conference.
Israel, Canada, Australia, The Netherlands and Italy have also boycotted the conference, and Germany is strongly leaning toward doing so.
Not only is the U.N. ineffectual and corrupt, it is also blighted by double standards, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the Holocaust-denying, Jew-hating scum who will participate in this so-called conference on racism, and the seriousness with which they'll be greeted.
The Mohammeds, Ahmeds and Jamals in attendance will demand their usual condemnation of Israel and the reinstatement of the U.N.'s 1975 General Assembly Resolution 3379 which stated that Zionism was a form of racism and racial discrimination. (Resolution 3379 was revoked in 1991.)
The 2001 U.N. Conference on racism in Durban, South Africa was disastrous due to rancorous language condemning Israel, and Obama said that if the language from Durban did not significantly change its anti-Israel and anti-Western bias—
which it hasn't—then the U.S. could not take part in the latest conference.
Democratic congresswoman Barbara Lee did have a point when she made clear her disagreement with the President: "This decision is inconsistent with the administration's policy of engaging with those we agree with and those we disagree with..." she said. "The US is making it more difficult for it to play a leadership role on UN Human Rights Council as it states it plans to do. This is a missed opportunity, plain and simple."
Mr. Obama is indeed being inconsistent here, given his desire to pal around with the evil likes of Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad; listening to their every anti-American grievance, no matter how silly or psychotic. But I'm glad the Prez is being inconsistent here. If our absence from the conference does indeed make our job in helping to craft U.N. bullshit ... er, "human rights" more difficult, then it will have been well worth it and anything but a missed opportunity.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Jack Bilperson
“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.” ~George Washington, ~page 269 of The 5000 Year Leap.
“The nation which indulges toward another habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interests." ~ George Washington
"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." ~ Thomas Jefferson
2 - Mark Edward Manning
Ahmedinejad's reprehensible behavior yesterday"having took place hours before this piece was published"completely validated Mr. Obama's concerns.
The Iranian president is treating this conference as a joke, as a platform for his anti-Semitic paranoia, and making a mockery of the conference's goal, as noted by a very disappointed Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. Secretary-General. The British should never have had a presence in Geneva in the first place, but at least they walked out, along with other European delegates, when Ahmedinejad started spouting his tired old claptrap about a Jewish world conspiracy and "racist" policies of the Israeli nation.
This is the same man that our Messiah thinks we can have an everlasting peace with if only we just had dialogue? I hope that now Mr. Obama is a bit more enlightened with respect to the fact that President A. is a madman.
3 - Joanne Huspek
Good points. I also am glad he wasn't in attendance. Although the UN is now not much more than a hand-slapper when someone drifts away from the straight and narrow.
Hmm... What is the point of the UN again?
4 - roger nowosielski
Mark,
Little confused. In your main piece, you comment #2, not you're against it. Did I get it right?
5 - roger nowosielski
Meant: "the article is for it, your comment against it."
6 - Ruvy
Mark,
Nice article.
But the US of A is still dipping itself in mud. It has chosen to attempt its candidacy on whatever joke of a council the UN has these days for "human rights" (the way the bastards at the UN write it, Jews are not human). The "Blessed of Hussein is still trying his damnedest to shove a terror state down our throats here in Israel, and make at least a quarter million of us homeless.
The American Sect'y of Defense has killed a whole slew of joint weapons projects with Israel, and for all of its absence from the room when Ahmadinejad made a mockery of humanity with the filth of his "mouth", it is this fool that the "Blessed of Hussein" seeks to talk.
So, in spite of the tiny step of boycotting the joke of a conference in Genève, The US pf A is still headed firmly in the wrong direction - straight over the falls of disaster.
7 - Jim Jeffers
No guts -- no glory!
Boycotting the conference is a coward's way out.
A man's way is to listen and challenge.
Otherwise, it could be concluded that some of what was said cannot be refuted.
8 - roger nowosielski
Or otherwise, kick them out of the NY headquarters and stop paying the dues.
9 - Jim Jeffers
"Or otherwise, kick them out of the NY headquarters and stop paying the dues."
Exactly what the UN Charter says we should do when there is political disagreement.
Go back and read it.
10 - roger nowosielski
Well, it's becoming a disgrace, nothing short of a farce.
11 - Jim Jeffers
The UN became what it is after the US began using its veto power in blind support of Israel.
It started in 1967 when UN Res 242 called for Israel to withdraw from all occupied territory. The US agreed to the Resolution but then refused to enforce it.
Since then the US has used its veto power in the UN whenever Israel demands it.
Hundreds of times.
That's the disgrace.
12 - roger nowosielski
You may be right. If you overuse it, you abuse it. So now the shoe falls on the other foot.
13 - Clavos
The UN has been shit from the beginning.
14 - roger nowosielski
Anyway, sorry for past remarks. It wasn't fair of me.
15 - Mark Edward Manning
Roger, re: #4 -- I'm neither for nor against the conference from a purely theoretical viewpoint. The U.N. can idle away its time fingering its collective buttholes if it likes, that's all it's done during its lifetime and I expect no better of it; I just simply wish that, as a taxpayer, I didn't have to help fund their geopolitical scatology.
My point is, if the U.N. is to have a world conference on racism, the airing of anti-Semitic greivances is inconsistent with that agenda, not to mention downright hypocritical. Ahmedinejad is treating it like a joke, acting like the rock star of the event, turning it into his personal platform for all the other brain-damaged lunatics in attendance to applaud for. Obama was right to boycott this charlatanry and for reasons that have now become all too obvious.
16 - Mark Edward Manning
Ruvy, no argument there with regard to shoving a terror state down your throats, and making a quarter million of you homeless. I concur.
However, despite that I know this was mere lip service and posturing from Obama, it was still nice to see, even if it was a largely empty gesture.
17 - zingzing
is ahmedinejad treated like a celebrity, or is he treated like someone they have to let speak? obviously the point of this is not to have some big jew-hating happening... but in the interest of getting every side (or every idiot) to have their spot, is it not... hrm, what's the word... politically correct, at least, to let him speak?
i think he should speak. if this thing is about racism in the world, why not let the racists speak? if they do, this world is free, and we can see them for what they are, so we know what's out there.
if not, what's this thing supposed to be about? a bunch of people saying racism is bad? oh, dear god, enlighten me.
this is what the u.n. is for. maybe it's foolish, but it's better than just yelling from another country that this guy or that guy is a racist. might as well be there to say it to their faces.
i don't see why obama boycotted this, and i don't see why you people don't recognize the fact that racist people and nations need to be taken on face-to-face, not from little blogs and medias based miles and nations away.
what are we saying by staying away? "we don't want to hear you," or "we don't think what you're saying matters," or "we feel like you need to be less racist," or some such pussy nonsense. just go up there and tell him that he's an asshole.
what we're doing here is being big old wimps. there's a reason these things happen, and it's not to waste everyone's time. we should confront each other about this on a national level, in a place like the u.n. that's where this shit should occur.
18 - Jordan Richardson
racist people and nations need to be taken on face-to-face, not from little blogs and medias based miles and nations away.
This.
19 - roger nowosielski
I like your comments, Zing. UN is what it is, but it it a forum which at least affords peaceful confrontation rather than armed conflict, so we may as well use it. Airing of differences and possibly resolving them would be too much to hope for; someday perhaps. But then again, how different is it, really, from the BC culture here. Not by very much, I'm afraid. So we may as well use it for what it's worth - if only to identify the nuts.
20 - Ruvy
Jim,
You seem to think the United States should have thrown Israel under the bus publicly a long time ago. Whether you realize this or not, that is what the "Blessed of Hussein" is doing now. So don't despair for what you want. Your are getting it.
You will get what you want, Jim, and it will all go wrong.
But first you should know what the Americans should have done.
1. Having refused entry to thousands of Jews prior to the Nazis exterminating them in Europe, they should have, after the invasion of Normandy, the USAAF should have bombed the tracks to the concentration camps in Germany and Poland, and bombed the concentration camps to powder. The Americans had the planes, bombs and air superiority to do those things in 1944-45. Millions of Jews (as well as Gypsies, homosexuals and others targeted by the Nazis) would have been saved, escaping to the forests in the chaos of the air raids. It is appropriate to tell you this the day after WE commemorate our fallen heroes and martyrs in the meat-grinder known as World War II.
2. After the war, they should have pressured the Brits (by threatening to withhold food) to allow the doors of Mandate Palestine to open to Jewish refugees. The DP camps in Europe would have emptied out. In addition, they should have pressured the Brits (again under the pain of not receiving food shipments) to fulfill their Mandate in Palestine and make possible with all speed a Jewish State in the Land of Israel. This was their original charge. This they refused to do. The duplicitous Brits should have been held to their word.
3. The United States should have armed the Jewish military in the new state to the teeth. In the likely event of a war with the Arabs and likely Jewish victory, Americans should have used gunboat diplomacy to force neighboring Arab states to sign a peace treaty recognizing Israel as a Jewish State.
There would have been NO UN resolution 181 partitioning the western quarter of the Mandate. A Jewish State would have existed in the entire western quarter of the Mandate, from Metulla to Eilat and from the Mediterranean to Jericho.
There would have been NO Arab refugee problem; there might have been a war, but it would have been quickly won by American-armed Jewish forces. Had the Americans done all these things, from step 1 to step 3, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives would have been saved, and it is likely that this entire region now would be prospering under a Middle Eastern Economic Union, with Israel as its driving engine. I strongly suspect, the world would be a far more prosperous place, far less wracked by war and death than it is now. It is easy for me, a Jew, to see the alternate history opening up in front of me, as alternate history is my favorite form of science fiction.
There would have been Six Day War; their would have been NO UN Resolution 242; there wold have been NO Yom Kippur War; there would have been NO Arab terror. THE WORLD TRADE CENTER ugly as it was WOULD STILL BE STANDING! There likely would have been NO invasion of Iraq, a war that has drained you to penury.
The next time any of you asks me what America should do for Israel - go back and read this comment! By their fruits shall you know them; they who pursue righteousness bring only goodness to the world. Your nation would be prosperous, having firm and true friends in the Middle East, instead of having to reach out an uncertain hand to Arab and Persian murderers.
The question is not "what do you want from America?" The question is "what should America have done?"
America did wrong, terribly wrong in so many ways, and now, Jim, your nation is paying the wages for its wrongdoing, and we are all suffering world-wide as a result. And the suffering world-wide will get worse, as your nation continues its slide to disaster.
21 - Ruvy
That should have read, "There would have been NO Six Day War;"
And I missed closing an HTML code for italics in the second paragraph - a thousand apologies....
22 - Ruvy
what are we saying by staying away? "we don't want to hear you," or "we don't think what you're saying matters," or "we feel like you need to be less racist," or some such pussy nonsense. just go up there and tell him that he's an asshole.
what we're doing here is being big old wimps. there's a reason these things happen, and it's not to waste everyone's time. we should confront each other about this on a national level, in a place like the u.n. that's where this shit should occur.
I don't know about you zing, but so far as I'm concerned, we should say nothing. When the SOB gets back to to Tehran, the place ought to be vaporized - not by Americans. G-d forbid you pussies should be bothered to do the RIGHT thing - no, by us Jews. They should die as Haman died with the very weapons they have chosen to kill us off.
Then you can jump up and down and scream bloody murder after we will have saved your contemptibly sorry asses yet another time.
23 - M a rk
fuck that
24 - roger nowosielski
What? You don't like the idea of nuking?
25 - M a rk
...tourettes, sorry
comes on when I read Ruvy's murderous bile