OT: Rating the President

[Wardad]

Presidential poll .
The Democratic National Committee is currently polling Americans through the Internet to determine the electability of Hillary Clinton for the presidency of the United States in 2004. If you would like to show your support for Hillary and encourage her to run for President of the United States in 2004 please click the link below.

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~kinho/youare.swf

[Fyron]

She would be a worse president than her husband was...

[E. Albright]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
At stake here is not whether the US will invade Iraq, but whether the UN will be relevant to world politics and opinion. Seventeen times now, they have told Saddam, "You stop that or else!" Some of these "or elses" have enumerated the consequences of not stopping. If they fail to enforce their Chapter VI (i.e., binding) resolutions, then they no longer have any authority.

So then I suppose the UN needs to follow up military action against Iraq with military action against Isreal? As another person pointed out, they've been glibly ignoring numerous UN resolutions for years. Or perhaps one can establish one's authority through non-military means, hmm?

That alone is "material breach" according to UN Sec. Council Res. 1441, which demands military repercussions.

As to whether or not this constitutes a material breach can be (and is being) argued. And furthermore, I don't remember anything about material breaches demanding military repercussions. IIRC, the word was that a material breach would have "grave consequences". Bush takes this to mean "We get to bLast 'em, an' right now!", whereas the "old" Europeans take this as "We shall pass another resolution saying that we get to bLast them, should we see fit". This double interpretation was to my knowledge generally acknowledged as the reason why the US and OE were able to agree on 1441, as it "gave" them both what they wanted...

They will be like a parent who nags his child rather than disciplines him. (Apologies to you PC types who don't like the use of the masculine gender for the neuter gender, the way English is meant to be. )

Um, no. No, no, no. English isn't meant to be anything in particular, other than whatever Anglophones make it into. There is no fixed "standard" of what English should be (no, not even the OED ), and to claim otherwise is pushing an agenda. Yes, English traditionaly used the masculine as the default gender (but not the neuter gender, mind; one can and must make a distinction 'twixt the two), but that doesn't mean that Anglophones ought to continue to speak thusly (argumentum ad antiquitatem). I'll spare you examples of analogous reasoning, but I reiterate: smiley or no, language can change, will change, and must change, and to demand that it oughtn't is naught but to jam one's finger into one of the multitude holes in the dike whilst ignoring all others...

As an aside (and likely a rant, but still), I'm annoyed by the lack of a generally recognized neuter gender in English. Yes, you can use "one", but if you speak to an average Anglophone, they'll think you're rather odd. And you can refer to people in the third-person plural, but again, if an average speaker is addressed, one will regard you strangely. And I'll admit, neither of the preceding solutions really sound "right" to my ear, tho' I personaly tend towards they-ing.

Eh, 'tis naught but the whimsy of the current structure of the language clashing with my worldview; for comparison, French has a nice, common neuter gender (tho' yes, it also has a masculine default, but word gender has slightly different implications en français), but I'm maddened by the lack of an equivalent to "Ms.". What it comes down to is that language is formed by consensus, so I either need to find a language tied to a culture that matches my worldview very tightly, bend my own langauge to my worldview, or get over it and accept that people will use and change language in ways that might trouble me...

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Wanderer:
Like a lot of people, I don't want a war, but if we do invade, I want it to be under the auspices of the UN. Acting alone could cause more problems than it solves - to strain the analogy past breaking point, we don't want the pair of policemen (who initially don't get on but by the end of the film have formed a Lasting bond) to have their badges taken off them and told they're off the case, leaving one to mutter "I'm getting too old for this s**t" and the other to become suicidally paranoid .

Try as I might, I just can't picture Kofi Annan as the grizzeled veteran police lieutenant popping antacids and shouting obcenities at his hotshot detective team.

Geoschmo

[Krsqk]

So then I suppose the UN needs to follow up military action against Iraq with military action against Isreal? As another person pointed out, they've been glibly ignoring numerous UN resolutions for years. Or perhaps one can establish one's authority through non-military means, hmm?

The UN has two different chapters in its charter regarding resolutions: Chapter V and Chapter VI. Chapter VI resolutions are binding. They require enforcement when breached. The resolutions on Iraq have all been Chapter VI resolutions. Chapter V resolutions are non-binding. They are equivalent to saying, "We think you should _______, but we aren't going to enforce that." The majority (if not all) of the resolutions RE: Israel have been Chapter V resolutions. No one seems to be mentioning that difference (especially Arafat and Hussein). If the UN really wants someone to do something, they should 1) pass a Chapter VI resolution, and 2) actually enforce it when it broken. "If you do that again, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen if you do that again after I talk about what I should tell you I'll tell you if it happens again..."

RE: the English thingy: It was a joke. That's why it had a . Maybe it needed another smiley.

[ February 03, 2003, 18:49: Message edited by: Krsqk ]

[E. Albright]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
The UN has two different chapters in its charter regarding resolutions: Chapter V and Chapter VI. Chapter VI resolutions are binding. They require enforcement when breached. The resolutions on Iraq have all been Chapter VI resolutions. Chapter V resolutions are non-binding. They are equivalent to saying, "We think you should _______, but we aren't going to enforce that." The majority (if not all) of the resolutions RE: Israel have been Chapter V resolutions. No one seems to be mentioning that difference (especially Arafat and Hussein). If the UN really wants someone to do something, they should 1) pass a Chapter VI resolution, and 2) actually enforce it when it broken.

Your numbers are off. Taking a quick look at the UN Charter, we can note that the relevant Chapters are IV and V. And let's see what they say re: resolutions:

Article 14
Subject to the provisions of Article 12, the General Assembly may recommend measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situation, regardless of origin, which it deems likely to impair the general welfare or friendly relations among nations, including situations resulting from a violation of the provisions of the present Charter setting forth the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.

Article 25
The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.

One must note something you've failed to mention: the difference is General Assembly v. Security Council decisions. And actually, plenty of people (outside of the mainstream American media, anyway) have commented on the fact that the GA passes resolutions against Israel, but the SC never seems to. See, there's a very simple reason for this: to pass a SC resolution against Israel, the US veto would have to be evaded. And that's NOT gonna happen. This does bring up another interesting double standard, however. The media made noise Last fall about how the French or Russian veto threats that were stalling the proposal of anti-Iraqi SC resolutions represented naught but special-interest efforts to benefit a client state. Now, why doesn't the (US mainstream) media talk mention the obvious parallel to a lack of pro-Palestinien SC resolutions?

(Aside from the fact that the mainstream US media prefers to forget that the Palestiniens exist, of course...)

[Edit: script cleanup, typos]

[ February 04, 2003, 10:57: Message edited by: E. Albright ]

[Krsqk]

Originally posted by E. Albright:
Your numbers are off. Taking a quick look at the UN Charter, we can note that the relevant Chapters are IV and V.

Oops. *prepares to be sued*

One must note something you've failed to mention: the difference is General Assembly v. Security Council decisions. And actually, plenty of people (outside of the mainstream American media, anyway) have commented on the fact that the GA passes resolutions against Israel, but the SC never seems to. See, there's a very simple reason for this: to pass a SC resolution against Israel, the US veto would have to be evaded. And that's NOT gonna happen.

1) You don't win if you don't try; 2) You're not going to get a country to pass a SC resolution demanding things unacceptable to its ally. Great Britain's not going to demand that we return Hawaii to the natives, either, although there's a movement for that.

This does bring up another interesting double standard, however. The media made noise Last fall about how the French or Russian veto threats that were stalling the proposal of anti-Iraqi SC resolutions represented naught but special-interest efforts to benefit a client state. Now, why doesn't the (US mainstream) media talk mention the obvious parallel to a lack of pro-Palestinien SC resolutions? (Aside from the fact that the mainstream US media prefers to forget that the Palestiniens exist, of course...)

I'm not a mind-reader, but it's not for any supposed symapthy for the Israelis on the part of the media. They lean more toward headlines like "Israelis Attack Settlement; 25 Palestinian Children Die." Then, near the end of the article, they bury a half-sentence or so stating that the intended target was the group of gunmen hiding in the middle of the children. I can't seem to find too many articles which "forget" the existence of the Palestinians. The NY Times, for example, seems quite aware of them. The AP and Reuters articles printed in the Orlando Sentinel and its parent, the Chicago Tribune, are also frequently pro-Palestinian.

This brings up a point which always irks me. Papers always defend themselves against claims of bias by pointing to their editorials. No one's complaining of bias on the opinion page; it's the slant of the news that matters. It's like a cattle farmer claiming to run a zoo because he keeps a dog on his porch. "See? We don't just have cows!"

[ February 04, 2003, 15:44: Message edited by: Krsqk ]