By recognizing an independent Kosovo the U.S. is playing a dangerous game in the Balkans, one that has led to war in the past and could lead to war in the near future. The independence of Kosovo was engineered by the UN.
Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has warned that Russia could use military force if the Kosovo independence dispute escalates.
"If the EU develops a unified position or if NATO exceeds its mandate set by the UN, then these organizations will be in conflict with the UN," he said.
In that case Russia would "proceed on the basis that in order to be respected we need to use brute force", he said.
Many EU members have recognized Kosovo, but several oppose recognition.
Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, backs Serbia, which has condemned the independence declaration issued by the Kosovo parliament on 17 February. (Source: BBC News)
Posted by Walt as Regionalism, War & Peace at 12:56 AM EST
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By Alan Caruba
The libraries of the world are filled with books devoted to history and new ones are published on any almost daily basis, but if their lessons are ignored, it condemns nations and the peoples of the world to horrors that increase with the evolving technology of death.
A book that should be mandatory reading for all the current and aspiring leaders of the world is David A. Andelman’s “A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.”
“If there was a single moment in the twentieth century when it might have been different, this was the moment.” The gathering in Paris that followed the end of World War I and the defeat of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires did not merely fail to insure peace; it set in motion the events leading to World War II, the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the tinderbox that is today’s Middle East.
Most Americans, if they know anything about the last century, may associate the event that brought together the United States, England, France, Japan, and representatives of colonial and emerging nations with President Woodrow Wilson’s dream of creating a League of Nations. It was his dream to create an organization that would enforce international laws. WWI was to be “the war to end all wars.” With the exception of the hapless Herbert Hoover, the U.S. has not had such a dangerously naïve, arrogant, and failed presidency until Jimmy Carter.
Following the end of World War II, another such effort was made with the establishment of the United Nations. It has proven to be every bit the failure as the League and infinitely more corrupt.
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Posted by Walt as General Commentary, War & Peace at 12:08 AM EST
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by Thomas E. Brewton
Atheists thought that God really was dead
French revolutionary philosophers and the socialist theoreticians who followed them in the early 1800s were captured by what British socialist Graham Wallas called the liberal fallacy: the self-absorbed assumption that whatever their reasoning told them had, by definition, to be the truth and, furthermore, that everyone else on earth would naturally agree with their conclusions. It is a form of tunnel vision that ignores all factors other than what interests liberals.
We see this today in the prescriptions of liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats. They are confident that, because they abhor war, so too does Al Queda. Because liberals are willing to relinquish our national sovereignty to the UN, confident that every dispute can be resolved by rational discussion, they assume Islamic jihadists are wired the same way.
At the apogee of atheistic materialism, in the 1830s, Auguste Comte's well-intentioned expectation was that all the world would quickly recognize the superiority of his Positivistic philosophy and its Religion of Humanity. People from the rest of Europe, from America, and from Asia, he assumed, would all come to sit worshipfully at his feet to learn the proper new system of socialist government and its canon of materialistic ethics.
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Posted by Walt as War & Peace at 7:37 PM EDT
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by Daniel Clark
Under the 1997 International Chemical Weapons Convention, all signatories, including the United States, were to destroy their stockpiles of chemical weapons by 2006. That deadline has since been put off until 2012, but the U.S. is now requesting a further extension, to the year 2023.
To this point, we've only eliminated approximately 41 percent of our Cold War-era chemical weapons stocks, while the Russians have only destroyed about 3 percent of their own. This is unacceptable. According to our inspectors, Saddam Hussein obliterated all of his chemical weapons in a moment of panic, after those same intrepid inspectors had gotten a little too close for comfort. If he can complete a project like that almost instantly, then there's no excuse for our taking 26 years to do the same.
Are we so filled with hubris that we won't admit that there are certain things our enemies can do better than we can? Saddam may be a genocidal maniac, but if he really destroyed all of his chemical weapons in 1991 — as the Duelfer Report tells us he did — then our global commitments demand that we at least try to learn his methods before asking for yet another 11 years. To that end, here are some suggestions on how to destroy chemical weapons quickly and inexpensively, in such a way that is sure to satisfy the international community.
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Posted by Walt as War & Peace at 7:13 PM EST
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The only American soldier ever arrested, tried and convicted for refusing to deploy under United Nations control has been rejected on appeal by the US Court of Appeals (Case #05-5023).
District of Columbia (PRWEB) August 30, 2006 — The American soldier who refused to wear a United Nations blue beret lost another round last week in his attempt to petition for a redress of grievances, US Court of Appeals (Case #05-5023).
In a tersely worded note, the Court of Appeals made it clear than not one of the eleven justices was interested in the merits of the case before them. Not one could discover a Constitutional issue that has been violated in New's eleven year legal odyssey to have his case heard on its own merits. (Wording below.)
The issue before this court was actually unrelated to New's stand in 1995, when he refused to report to a formation in Germany, where his battle dress uniform (BDU) was to have been altered to replace the US flag on the right shoulder with a United Nations patch. This court was asked to examine the radical "Standard of Review" which a three-judge panel used earlier this year to reject New's appeal.
As has happened several times in New's case, he is now carrying a torch for an issue that is secondary to his initial issue, but has been forced upon him by several astonishing rulings by courts which cannot find their way to examine the merits of his case. The latest ruling by the Court of Appeals overturned 40 years of precedent by this very court.
The initial court-martial in 2006 refused to allow SPC New to present any evidence in his own defense, which would have proved that the uniform changes were unauthorized; the chain of command under a U.N. general were unconstitutional; and the deployment into Macedonia was, in fact, illegal. The military courts of appeal ruled, in order to prevent New's evidence from being submitted, that Evidence is not a fundamental element of the Defense. JAG officers throughout the military were stunned at that ruling.
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Posted by Walt as War & Peace at 8:12 AM EDT
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What about Hezbollah's anti-personal rockets that were fired on Israeli citizens?
The UN's Human Rights Council recently voted to investigate allegations of "systematic targeting and killings of civilians" by Israel in their recent war with Hezbollah terrorists. Most of the nations voting for the investigation were Muslin Nations and Russia. Most of the western nations voted no to the investigation. The United States is no longer a member of the Human Rights Council.
What about the Hezbollah rockets with anti-personal flack that were fired indiscriminately into civilian population centers? You can see for yourself an excellent power point presentation on TampaBayOnline.org. There are close up pictures of the Hezbollah rockets damage, including the perforation of cars and walls with the evidence of thousand of ball bearing shrapnel.
Twenty-seven states on the council — including Russia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — voted on Aug. 11 in favour of the probe, which was proposed last month by the countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Arab League.
Canada joined the United Kingdom, Germany and nine other countries in voting against the call for the probe, while eight nations abstained.
Itzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, called the convening of the special session "one-sided" and reiterated his criticism from last month, when he said it was "painful" that the council has made a distinction between suffering and deaths occurring in different countries. (CBC.ca)
The UN's Human Rights Council is either blind or enabling the destruction of Israel by their Muslim enemies.
Posted by Walt as Freedom & Human Rights, Middle East, War & Peace at 8:11 AM EDT
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Practically all reports about Iran’s effort to become a nuclear power point to fears that the Tehran government will soon join the list of nations possessing a nuclear weapon. But a careful study of these reports shows that Iran’s nuclear program has only recently enriched uranium to a level under five percent, the threshold needed to generate electricity. Uranium must be enriched to the 90 percent level for bomb use, and Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, has announced that his nation has no intention of enriching it to that level because only the ability to generate electricity is sought.
Therefore, the worries about Iran being able to “nuke” either its neighbors or any other nations are premature. Without help from outside, and assuming that Aghazadeh isn’t lying, Iran is at least five years away from being able, by herself, to produce a bomb. Nevertheless, diplomats from the United States, Britain and France have drafted a UN Security Council resolution requiring Iran to cease its nuclear program. “The Security Council has no option but to proceed under Chapter 7 [of the UN Charter],” claimed United States Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns. What he means is that he favors using U.S. forces under overall UN direction to compel Iran to do what the U.S. demands. While ruling out talks between Washington and Tehran, Burns has even stated, “Diplomacy is not always about words. Right now, isolation is what will work best.” But, if he and his colleagues get their way, armed force will work even better.
What the future holds is, of course, unclear. But it seems obvious that U.S. leaders are seeking authorization via a Security Council resolution to launch a military strike against Iran, one of the world’s key suppliers of oil. No one disputes the fact that the “Iran crisis” has contributed to rising oil prices. But, beyond the price of oil, what we see here is another example of the United States using the UN to muscle another nation while simultaneously enhancing the UN’s power and prestige. This makes sense only with the realization that the UN isn’t taking over the world. Instead, our nation is being delivered to the world body by our own leaders. The globalists running the U.S. government intend to build the UN into a world government that they will lead.
Posted by Walt as Middle East, War & Peace at 6:01 AM EDT
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The Hezbollah terrorists in their recent aggression with Israel received from many sources, the real-time intelligence on the location of the IDF and choosing targets for their rocket attacks. They had cable news and the internet for their sources. And one of the main sources was the UN's UNIFIL contingent stationed in southern Lebanon.
UNIFIL–the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978–is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and matériel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.
Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.
. . .a review of every single UNIFIL web posting during the war shows that, while UNIFIL was daily revealing the towns where Israeli soldiers were located, the positions from which they were firing, and when and how they had entered Lebanese territory, it never described Hezbollah movements or locations with any specificity whatsoever. (The Weekly Standard)
I certainly would not want the UN or any of is sub-organizations in the United States. How many of its foreign members with diplomatic immunity are actually spying for our enemies?
Posted by Walt as Middle East, Terrorism, War & Peace at 10:50 AM EDT
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by Thomas E. Brewton
The View from 1776
The only substance to the UN is the building on the East River that houses it. Apart from that distinctive physical presence, it’s a dangerous charade that distorts the reality of foreign affairs and invites suicidal policies.
The currently unfolding fiasco of UN “peacekeeping” in Lebanon is just one more piece of empirical evidence that the UN is worse than useless. Will liberals like John Kerry and Teddy Kennedy ever recognize that clinging to the myth of world order through the UN is like jumping off the Empire State Building using a kleenex as a parachute?
The driving force behind Presidents, past, present, and future, going through the motions with the UN is uninformed public opinion, manipulated by the liberal media and politicians. No one who actually examines the 85-year history of this socialist mythology of world government, first in the League of Nations, now in the UN, can point to any evidence that it works. It’s just a way for the public to stick its head under the covers and hope that the goblins go away.
Nonetheless, impelled by uninformed domestic and world opinion, the United States and Israel have been ensnared in an untenable situation. Relying upon France’s UN promises to lead an international army to disarm Hezbollah, we and Israel agreed to a cease-fire.
As soon as the UN deal was signed, France backed out, and no one else is prepared to take its place. Hezbollah not only is keeping all its weaponry, but is already resupplying its arms and ammunition from Iran via Syria. With the charade of a UN “peace,” all Israeli efforts to enforce the UN-mandated embargo on arms shipments to Hezbollah are being branded by the UN and the world media as unacceptable aggression.
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Posted by Walt as Corruption, Middle East, Terrorism, War & Peace at 8:27 PM EDT
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Here is ab interesting development in the rules of engagement with the U.N.'s peace-keeping force in Lebanon that is almost laughable.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to recommend Monday that the rules of engagement of the enhanced UNIFIL force to be deployed in Lebanon include opening fire on Hezbollah where necessary, The Jerusalem Post has learned. . .
. . . The question of the rules of engagement was addressed last Thursday in New York at a meeting of those countries considering sending troops to the force, with some of those countries opposed to being able to open fire, concerned that Hezbollah would then shoot back. (The Jerusalem Post)
They are afraid that Hezbollah will back? What good is a peace-keeping military force that is afraid to use their military force in order to keep the peace?
It appears those countries fearing an engagement with Hezbollah are more afraid of losing the per diem pay for their troops than keeping the peace in the Lebanon.
Posted by Walt as Middle East, War & Peace at 1:43 PM EDT
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