Posts Tagged ‘treaty’
Time for Bob Dole to leave the Republican Party behind
Bob Dole is probably mad as hell right now. And he has every right to be. In fact, he should leave the Republican Party in protest!
Dole, a lifelong Republican politician who was disabled during World War II, made an extraordinary appearance on the Senate floor Tuesday as lawmakers prepared to vote on a United Nations treaty on the rights of the disabled.
Dole, now 89, frail and in a wheelchair (and just six days out of the hospital), hoped his presence would sway his party to approve the treaty, which is modeled after the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act that he pushed through Congress in 1990.
But his party, now controlled by the hard right, rejected it. With 38 Republicans casting “no” votes, the 61-38 vote fell five short of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify a treaty.
Opponents like Tea Party favorite Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) argued that the treaty by its very nature threatened U.S. sovereignty and could lead to the state, rather than parents, determining what was in the best interest of disabled children in such areas as home schooling…
An instance where just a fraction of the reactionaries in charge of Republican ideology were able to translate their paranoia, xenophobia, idiocy into party policy.
The treaty, already signed by 155 nations and ratified by 126 countries, including Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, was negotiated by the George W. Bush administration and signed by President Barack Obama in 2009.
“This is one of the saddest days I’ve seen in almost 28 years in the Senate and it needs to be a wakeup call about a broken institution that’s letting down the American people,” Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said in a statement after the vote. He continued:
“We need to fix this place because what happens and doesn’t happen here affects millions of lives. Today the dysfunction hurt veterans and the disabled and that’s unacceptable. This treaty was supported by every veterans group in America and Bob Dole made an inspiring and courageous personal journey back to the Senate to fight for it. It had bipartisan support, and it had the facts on its side, and yet for one ugly vote, none of that seemed to matter.”
So this is what the Republican Party has become since Dole left office.
The article rolls on about the emotional difficulties facing Dole if he considers leaving the party he served all his political life.
Sorry, Bob – I offer the same unnecessary “sorry” to anyone else who thinks this is difficult. I have one family member who left what the Republican Party became under George W. Bush. He didn’t need to wait for the crass cowardice of party leaders since the advent of the Tea Party.
That the party he supported for 50 years discovered a “mandate” to invade two countries and lay the deficit for those wars on the shoulders of following administrations on the basis of neo-con ideology, after taking office with a losing popular vote – was contemptible. Crap not worth justifying by any stretch of self-deceit.
What has followed through Republican opposition to the Obama presidency solely on the basis of losing control of the White House to a Black intellectual – is something lower than contemptible. Only human beings are capable of conjuring up such rationales for self-destruction.
“If Internet governance ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
The best solution to improving oversight of the Internet may be to do nothing at all, a senior U.S. official said…while briefing reporters on a conference…that could decide to consolidate control within a U.N. body.
The International Telecommunication Union, the U.N. body convening the conference, has said there is broad consensus that the treaty governing the way international voice, data and video traffic is handled needs to be updated after 24 years.
With the rapid spread of the Internet around the world, the 178 signatories have decided to look into ways of increasing collaboration, using telecoms to drive economic development, and making the rules more relevant and responsive to the fast-evolving industry.
However, doing nothing “would not be a terrible outcome at all”, said U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer, who will head the U.S. delegation at the World Conference on International Telecommunications, which will be held in Dubai.
“The natural path we’re on is pretty good,” he told reporters in Geneva.
“Does that mean there aren’t things that could improve? Absolutely there are things that could improve. But the best thing to do, if you could pick two options, one is to get prescriptive and get into a lot of things versus leaving things open, we’re much better by leaving things open…”
Between ideologues who have nanny state-remits the size of a biblical epoch and political hacks living off the corporate dole I wonder sometimes how much longer Netizens will enjoy the comparative freedom we’ve had, so far. Yes, I know that varies from culture to culture. Cripes, I’ve been online since 1983.
The battle closest to my heart remains the confrontation between Web generations still intoxicated by the level of free speech afforded by the Web – and puritans, hucksters for rules and regulations committed as thoroughly to preventing thought as restricting dissent and freethought.
Senate Republicans want US shipping classed as privateers
Republican flag
When U.S. Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), both vice presidential hopefuls, recently declared their opposition to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, they virtually guaranteed that it would be dead on arrival if it were sent to the Senate. A group of 34 senators, including Ayotte and Portman and led by Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), is now on the record promising to vote against UNCLOS, which is enough to make getting the two-thirds majority necessary for ratification impossible.
UNCLOS was first negotiated 30 years ago. But back then, U.S. President Ronald Reagan objected to it because, he argued, it would jeopardize U.S. national and business interests, most notably with respect to seabed mining. A major renegotiation in 1994 addressed his concerns, and the United States signed. Now, the U.S. Navy and business community are among UNCLOS’ strongest supporters. So, too, was the George W. Bush administration, which tried to get the treaty ratified in 2007 but failed due to Republican opposition in the Senate.
Today’s Republicans continue their march backwards against history, against the best interests of American commerce. Their rejection of treaty law, multilateral treaties, guarantees outlaw status for American shipping.
All of Mexico’s highly-enriched uranium removed to United States
Rachel Maddow reports exclusively the breaking news that all of Mexico’s highly enriched uranium has been removed to the United States, and talks with Sarah Dickerson, National Nuclear Security Administration threat reduction director, and Anthony Wayne, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, about the distribution of nuclear material around the world by the U.S. and how the deal was made with Mexico to take their nuclear material off their hands.
That’s the intro to several videos released last night as a special on MSNBC. About a month ago Rachel Maddow traveled with NSA specialists supervising the removal of highly-enriched uranium from Mexico’s research reactors – to be brought back to the United States. The program was interesting in more than one way.
Regulars here know that one function of this, my personal blog, is to offer for reflection some of the few remaining bits and pieces of professional journalism I can find. It’s a diminishing skill for a number of reasons – the biggest being the transformation of “news” into “entertainment”.
Rachel Maddow is part of an even smaller percentage of journalists who carries job skills from print to video. As a news junkie I watch a lot more news than most. I watch news programs and explode often over incompetent journalists who haven’t yet learned to ask leading questions – instead of stupid questions.
For this reason, I suggest you watch the linked videos available at the MSNBC site, Rachel’s Maddow’s blog. She and they may someday release these to easier access on YouTube or somewhere. Not yet. So, I’m not going to jump through all the technical hoops needed today – to host this at this site. But, I highly recommend watching, learning, thinking about the questioning both casual and critical. We don’t get very much of this.
Click on the photo to go to the video site. After the bloody commercial and the intro segment, I’d suggest watching the videos in sequence. There’s a menu on the left side of the screen.
Merkel and Sarkozy ask European Treaty to require nations to substitute legitimate accounting for lies
Haven’t we been here before?
Under the pressure of financial crisis and with the euro currency at stake, the two key leaders of the euro zone said Monday that they would together push to remake the European Union into a more integrated political and economic federation, with tight legal restraints on how much debt national parliaments can issue.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, meeting here at the start of a crucial week that will end with a European Union summit meeting on Thursday and Friday, called for amendments to European treaties that would include centralized oversight over budgets and automatic sanctions against countries that violate firmer rules on deficits…
The automatic sanctions – or threat of – are the most Neverland part of the proposals, of course. Who expects a country unable to pay sufficient bills to pay a fine for not paying those bills?
“We want to make sure that the imbalances that led to the situation in the euro zone today cannot happen again,” Mr. Sarkozy told a joint news conference. “Therefore we want a new treaty, to make clear to the peoples of Europe that things cannot continue as they are.”
Mrs. Merkel, warmly embracing the French president despite their often testy relationship, insisted that the euro zone must be effectively reestablished under a different set of rules. “We want structural changes that go beyond agreements. We need binding debt brakes,” she said…
The two leaders are aiming to develop a clear consensus among the other members of the euro zone that they will push ahead with a new treaty. They appear to be calculating that such a signal of solidarity will be enough to persuade the European Central Bank, the only institution in Europe with enough financial firepower to defend the ability of member states to raise money on bond markets, that it has enough political cover to move more aggressively to protect vulnerable countries like Italy and Spain.
RTFA for the details, anecdotal hogwash, hopeful analysis – all of which ignores the fact that standards meant nothing for the several nations brought into the EU in the first place though they didn’t really meet standards. Creative analysis, voodoo economics were used to justify including countries like Greece into the club although they were miles and years away from realistic qualification.
Cluster bomb ban starts today
Removing Israeli cluster bomblets in Lebanon
A global treaty banning cluster munitions has gone into force.
The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which became binding international law today, prohibits the use, production and stockpiling of the weapon, which is blamed for killing and maiming tens of thousands of civilians…
The treaty requires signatories to destroy stockpiled cluster munitions within eight years, clear contaminated areas within 10 years and help affected communities and survivors…
Cluster bombs are dropped from planes or fired by mortars before the canisters open mid-air, releasing bomblets that scatter over a wide area. Most explode immediately, but those that fail to detonate on impact can claim victims many years after the end of the conflict…
More than two dozen countries have been affected by cluster bombs and activists say three out of five casualties occur during day-to-day activities.
Most of the victims are children and some are killed when they mistake the bomblets for toys.
The United Nations estimates almost half of all casualties are from Laos, where people are still at risk of being injured from unexploded bomblets.
Between 1964 and 1973, at the height of Vietnam War, the US military dropped more than 2 million tons of explosive ordnance, including an estimated 260 million cluster munitions, mainly to disrupt enemy supply lines that passed through Laos.
It is thought that around 30 per cent of bomblets failed to explode on impact, and over two-thirds of the country is still contaminated. Experts say they kill or injure about 300 people a year.
Thank you – to the nations with stockpiles of these weapons – who nevertheless signed the treaty, will eliminate these anti-civilian weapons and respect the ban: UK, France, Germany and Japan.
The United States, the world’s largest producer with the biggest stockpile of 800 million submunitions, has refused to sign the treaty…
China, Russia and Israel have not signed on either. I hope you’re all happy in bed together.
Let’s leave mutual defense treaties in the past
French President Nicolas Sarkozy believes the idea of Russia and Europe building up defenses against one another is something that should remain in the past.
The announcement came during Sarkozy’s speech at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg on Saturday.
“The idea that Russia should protect itself from Europe and that Europe should protect itself from Russia is a thing from the far past,” Sarkozy said, adding: “We must believe that we are fighting against one and the same threats.”
He said that terrorism and mafia are identical threats and that Russia and Europe must jointly fight against them.
Russian President Medvedev announced his initiative to draw up a new pan-European security pact in May 2008, and the first real draft was presented by the Kremlin in November 2009. It got responses from more than 20 governments and their administrations. The European Union and NATO have also studied the draft.
However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said such a treaty was unnecessary.
Her position was echoed by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen who has stated repeatedly that the West is no threat to Russia and that extra security guarantees are uncalled for.
Unless, John McCain had won the 2008 election and appointed George W. Bush secretary of state and Dick Cheney secretary of war. All bets would have been off.
Netanyahu chickens out of U.S. nuclear summit
Demonstration in East Jerusalem against Natanyahu’s latest land grab
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has withdrawn from a nuclear security summit in Washington next week, fearing Muslim delegates will demand Israel give up its assumed atomic arsenal.
If the diplomats attending had more than the accepted modicum of integrity, they all would censure Israel.
Netanyahu, who plans to send a deputy and two senior advisers to the April 12-13 conference instead, canceled “after learning that some countries including Egypt and Turkey plan to say Israel must sign the NPT,” an Israeli official said.
By staying outside the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Israel has not had to forswear nuclear arms nor admit international inspectors to its Dimona reactor, which experts believe has produced plutonium for between 80 and 200 warheads…
The Foreign Ministry in Ankara confirmed that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has sharply escalated criticism of Israel since last year’s Gaza war, would demand at the summit that it disarm as part of a nuclear-free Middle East…
“Israel has nuclear weapons but doesn’t belong to the NPT. Does that mean that those who don’t sign the NPT are in a privileged position..?”
Israel says its nuclear secrecy helps ward off enemies while avoiding the kind of provocations that can trigger arms races…
What a crock! There never has been an arms race which didn’t result in one faction feeding off another.
Israel was the first nation in the whole of the Middle East to commit to nuclear arms. They have continued to stockpile atomic weapons with the tacit approval of the White House and Congress every step of the way.
Japan signed secret A-Bomb deals with Nixon 40 years ago
Sato and Nixon in 1967
Documents belonging to the surviving family members of former Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato revealed that an agreement was signed between the Washington and Tokyo that allowed nuclear weapons to come on Japanese soil, according to the Daily Yomiuri newspaper.
The agreement was signed by former U.S. President Richard Nixon and Sato on Nov. 19, 1969, and was marked “top secret”.
The two-page document is currently being checked for authenticity, but could signal the first discovery of papers relating to secret pacts between Japan and the United States that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has said it wants to make public.
Since coming to power in September, the DPJ Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada has instructed his department to search for evidence of pacts that have long been denied by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which governed Japan almost interrupted for more than half a century.
The documents are likely to have a huge impact in Japan, where the government is amid negotiations with the United States about a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between the two nations in 2006. Under that agreement, tens of thousands of U.S. troops are set to remain in Okinawa after 2014, when 8,000 were to be moved to Guam.
On the SOFA issue, Okinawan residents have made their feelings known by protesting against the U.S. troops on their soil. If the document signed by Nixon and Sato turns out to be true, it is likely to exacerbate tensions between locals and U.S. military personnel in Japan’s southernmost prefecture.
Nice to see that Japan has acquired an administration that’s beginning to work at openness. Even though it requires admitting their government was in bed with crooks like Richard M. Nixon.
100 nations sign anti-cluster bomb treaty – guess who didn’t?
This 12-year-old threatened the Homeland Security of Israel
Certainly the treaty is ambitious in scope. Not only does it ban the stockpiling, use and transfer of virtually all existing cluster bombs, but it also provides for the clearing up of countries littered with unexploded munitions. And all of it to be achieved within the next eight years.
Although some countries argue cluster munitions still have continued military utility, critics say they are outmoded and immoral. They are regarded as outmoded because of the urban nature of many modern wars, and as immoral because of the failure of some sub-munitions to explode initially. Many of those munitions later kill or injure civilians who pick them up or tread on them.
Campaigners certainly hope the treaty will signal the end of this particular weapons system.
Most of the world’s biggest stockpilers will not sign the treaty – including the US, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel – backers argue the treaty will stigmatise the use of cluster bombs even for those who do not sign up.
They say that was the pattern with the landmine treaty, which many stockpilers also failed to sign.
Rationales, lies, denial and delusion characterize the thugs who continue to rely on death and destruction to enforce their will. Almost always in the name of homeland security.
History will judge them all.
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