US Defunds UNESCO After Palestine Vote 735
gzipped_tar writes "The U.S. withdrew funding after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's Palestine membership vote yesterday. The decision was triggered by a 1994 US law that requires financial ties to be cut with any UN agency that accords the Palestinians full membership. As Palestine actively pursues entrance to other UN agencies, the defunding list could grow. Interestingly, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) could also be among Palestine's next target, and U.S. is the big supporter of WIPO. A much more disturbing scenario is Palestine joining the International Atomic Energy Agency, cutting American funding to the organization that monitors nuclear proliferation in states like Iran."
USA against the World? (Score:5, Insightful)
UNESCO is one of the most highly regarded and wide-spread agencies for cultural preservation in the World. There is a fundamental flaw in a law predicating U.S. contributions to the United Nations and U.N. affiliates on their members voting a certain way. UNESCO does not control its members and how they vote.
The fact that a majority of UNESCO members want to grant admission to a Palestinian state is no reason for the U.S. to "pick up its marbles and go home." UNESCO would be better with U.S. participation. The U.S. would be better off by participating in UNESCO.
This law should be repealed before the US has removed itself from every UN organization in the world.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you think this is exactly the purpose they had in mind when they passed this law? To make it as costly as possible to do something the United States does not want them to do?
And since this is blocking future funding and not current funding, this is less like picking up your marbles and going home and more like simply refusing to come to any more marble games.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:5, Insightful)
So has Israel, and they were even ejected from UNESCO over it for awhile. Either way, this article isn't about Palestine (or Israel, or anyone else in the middle east) it's about the US having a law that prevents funding for scientific and cultural pursuits for political reasons. Regardless of who the parties are, there's no good reason for such inane laws.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless, of course, you are running a democracy, and want your tax money spent in accordance with the people's wishes.
But you know, ignoring that reason there's no good reason.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We don't support terror organizations (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because you're using the wrong definition of "terror organizations". You're probably thinking it means "people who target and kill large numbers of civilians, typically in order to push a geopolitical agenda".
But the definition of "terror organizations" used by major news outlets, including the New York Times, is "People who use violence to oppose the United States and/or Israel". That, by definition, means the US can't support terror organizations. Also, note that the same organization that were "freedom fighters" becomes a "terror organization" as soon as they switch from fighting the USSR to fighting the US.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:5, Insightful)
"tax money spent in accordance with the people's wishes"
Wow, has that happened anywhere in this country? For example, a large majority of Americans want us out of Afganistan, but don't let that bother you, just keep imagining that in this country we only spend money the people want spent.
Excellent news for Unesco (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an excellent news for Unesco, It did leave it alone from 1984 till 2002/3 and this was mutch better than the years between 2003 and Now.
First it will remove a large cadre of US employees from Unesco staff, and since there is a total disconnect between the US point of view on education and culture and the rest of the world it will enable the Unesco to work more efficiently without having to focus on making large american corporations and large US private universities happy.
It also shows how spitefull the current administration is (well the other party would probably do the same), influence at the unesco is largelly dependent on the size of each state contribution, so the US with 22% would have buried the palestinian, in practice maybe one or two managers and at most half a dozen palestinian employees will be hired, and probably mostly active in some cultural history preservation task in the middle east.
The US could have said publicly that the vote of Unesco is not binding for them, and that the officially "protest" the cooptation of a non state as a full member, but that they would go on working with Unesco to further cultural, etc....
But no, they have to "punish" the UN, well certainly there are a lot of undemocratic and unsavory regime who have influence there, but remember many are "allies" of the US, and there is no easy way to get people of the world represented.
To those who think that the US should "remove itself from the UN", just remember that this would in practice mean that "big countries" would unilaterally govern by "divide and conquer", so in the "best (from US point of view) case" you would have an "imperial republic" leading the world by having a small minority (only about 5% of the world population are US citizens) vote for everybody else, in the more likely case you would have the Communist Party of China ruling the world... (US waste of money in the financial system created the crisis which now pushes the European to borrow money from the PRC, how long do you think it will take till you have to pay the interests ?).
So meanwhile thank you very much leaving the Unesco alone...
Re:USA against the World? (Score:3, Insightful)
So has Israel, and they were even ejected from UNESCO over it for awhile. Either way, this article isn't about Palestine (or Israel, or anyone else in the middle east) it's about the US having a law that prevents funding for scientific and cultural pursuits for political reasons. Regardless of who the parties are, there's no good reason for such inane laws.
You do realize that the US government "funding" is nothing more then money taken from its legal citizens that lawfully pay taxes (and don't get it all returned at the end of the tax year). I personally have a problem in spending any sort of money on this extra-curricular activity while in a national debt and especially while people in our own country are in crisis financially. However, I adamantly object to spending for any sort of endeavor where a terrorist lead disputed territory gets a vote on how some non-US entity gets to spend US dollars taken from the hands of US taxpayers.
It's not "inane" ... it's common freaking sense. You don't go out to movies every night (regardless of how educational in nature they are) when you can't pay the mortgage ... and you CERTAINLY don't let your wife's druggy brother get a vote on what you should spend your money on.
How about not admitting terrorist groups (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:USA against the World? (Score:1, Insightful)
Chomsky is just like Shockley. I would listen to them about their specialties but _nothing_ else. Comes from people telling them they are super geniuses all day long IMHO.
Anything Chomsky says that is not about linguistics is equal to Shockleys comments about eugenics. Uninformed opinion.
Please (Score:4, Insightful)
Please grant Palestine full membership in WIPO, preferably yesterday.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:2, Insightful)
China loans money. They do not give it away. They are smarter than the US in this.
Re:Yee Hah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yee Hah! (Score:4, Insightful)
The one thing that pisses me off more than Jew haters are the people who consistently play the antisemitism card.
If I don't agree with one bonehead decision from Israel, it's because it's a bonehead decision.
If I think Avigdor Lieberman is an asshole, it really is because he's an asshole.
I couldn't care less about religion.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:2, Insightful)
The elected government of Gaza routinely fires mortars indiscriminately into civilian population centers. That may not be terrorism (though it is certainly terrifying to the victims), but it is illegal according to international law. Funny how no one ever takes them to task for it in the media.
Re:Discrimination is good for the peace process (Score:5, Insightful)
AFAICT, the peace process is the least of the issues involved here. UNESCO handles world heritage sites - y'know, like Pompeii which suffered two major collapses in the last week or so due to incompetent maintenance and a lack of funds. The money the Palestinians want is, according to them, going to go to a 5th century church (which is properly World Heritage) that is suffering from horrific maintenance issues and may well collapse without proper backing.
From the NERD perspective, 30% loss of money = 30% loss of World Heritage. That's a damn lot of history that had been, well, damned.
What happens between Israel and the Palestinians is, in historical terms and geographical terms, insignificant. Even if you consider the entire history of the entire region plus the rest of the Fertile Crescent, it is a pathetic 3,500 years and a trivial geographical space. It's NOTHING. The US' action has put into danger historical sites that are 70,000 years old - 20 TIMES as old as the entire recorded history for the Middle East - across an entire planet!
If you want to talk peace processes, then the Irish "Troubles" are recorded as having spanned 5,000 years and involved much of Europe and the US - twice the time the Middle East has even had issues and again many times the area. That was NOT solved by defunding the UN but WAS solved by all parties accepting that peaceful settlements were the way to go. The Basque issue, a mere 30 times older than modern Israel though younger than there have been conflicts in the region, was ALSO recently solved by an increase in mutual understanding and mutual efforts to end the futility cycle. Do you seriously think that either would have be settled today if there had been a blockade on assistance or tolerance of any kind? ESPECIALLY if that blockade had been on people completely unrelated to the parties involved?
(Would the IRA really have stopped shooting if Britain had decided to bomb the Colosseum in Rome in retaliation for the US sending a senator to Ireland? No? That's the practical upshot of what is taking place, so if the logic of such a move is inherently flawed then substituting in the current participants won't make the logic any better.)
Look, I fully understand Israel's insecurity and fears, and I respect that it has those for good reason, but nowhere in the history of humanity has anyone solved such issues by taking revenge on innocent third parties. I can't even recall any time in the history of humanity where anyone has solved such issued by taking revenge on those actually involved. If you want peace, you are going to have to do something that works. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, expecting different results. Insanity won't help Israel be safer.
Re:Why are the Palenstines bad again? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about 8,000 rockets launched into Israel in the last 10 years?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel [wikipedia.org]
Or blowing up a school bus full of kids:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avivim_school_bus_massacre [wikipedia.org]
Or hundreds of other attacks on unarmed civilians.
I'm not trying to establish moral equivalence or paint them as the sole bad guys or any other kind of oversimplification. I'm just trying to point out that if you're not aware of why the Palestinians are regarded with deep suspicion, then you really don't know anything at all about the nature of the conflict.
Re:It's the Palestinians who have the Nazi connect (Score:2, Insightful)
That's because every Muslim country votes for any anti-Israel measure, then so do Russia and China just to take a jab at the US by opposing Israel.
Tell that to the prominent Muslims whose policy is that Israel should be wiped from the Earth. This is Iran's policy, this is the policy of Hamas. The only way the Jews will be allowed to live there is under Muslim rule as second-class citizens.
Yes, I know the Muslim definition of hate speech -- anything that exposes their violent history and their genocidal goals. That's why they've been trying to get a ban on "defamation of religion" passed in the UN. And unlike US defamation law, the truth will not be a defense.
Re:It's the Palestinians who have the Nazi connect (Score:2, Insightful)
It takes a special kind of fool to equate what Israel does to the execution of six million Jews. The Palestinians are in no risk of becoming extinct. One does not have to approve of everything Israel does, but when you frame things the way you do, well, it just makes look either like an evil fucking bastard or a plain worthless brainless moron.
Re:How about not admitting terrorist groups (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? It seems with reports of shiite and suni violence from the official thugs in many middle east countries that Isreal would be the best country to support. Their record for religious freedom for Muslims beats that of their neighbors.
Certainly both sides have made many mistakes but putting Hamas beside the Isreali government shows that they're not even in the same league. Supporting Isreal and expecting any others to recognize their right to live is a fundamental requirement for peace in the middle east if they're willing to have it.
Then again.... I'm an idiot....
Re:USA against the World? (Score:3, Insightful)
One small problem with your great plan; most UN actions require US funding or participation to be affective. Seeing the US currently funds almost 1/4 of all UN activities, if they simply stopped paying how much do you think the UN would manage to accomplish (as if they accomplish much now).
The resolutions may continue flying off the desks of UN diplomats but they will be even more worthless that the ones currently filling their books.
If the US just decided to give their UN dues to charity instead the world would be a much better place.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:3, Insightful)
Consequently the U.S will have no vote, and no influence as it's no longer providing any funding.
And what of value will have been lost?
Do you think the US wouldn't be allowed to talk to other countries or make deals?
You'd have the UN passing a bunch of BS that the US typically vetoes at the last moment, like the Muslim countries' "human rights" initiatives that include stuff like "the right to have your religion protected from insult on penalty of death."
Honestly the idea of all the countries in the world being under one organization was rather boneheaded to begin with. Some countries are just too different.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no good reason for giving the United Nations a dime. It's a farce MY money shouldn't be taken for.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is as hilarious as illegal settlements.
Now for just a moment, imagine this:
- China has created a settlement near your town/city and has claimed all of the fertile land as its own.
- In order to provide security for their settlement, they routinely patrol your town in military vehicles and set up checkpoints.
- They build fences around their settlements and the local water supply. The water pipes that used to go from said water supply to your house have been destroyed.
- Some gun nut in your region shoots off a mortar at this Chinese settlement.
- Nothing was damaged but that mortar gave the Chinese quite a fright!
- The Chinese settlement responds with an invasion of troops and they destroy buildings and vital infrastructure.
- While you evacuated, they entered your home and decorated the walls with literal bags of human feces even though your toilet works just fine.
- New settlements are created in order to provide security for the old settlement.
- Rinse and repeat this same damned pattern over 50 years.
Now tell me, which do you sympathize with? The Chinese who are protecting their illegal settlements, or your fellow countrymen who have to deal with bullshit?
Right now we, the citizens of the United States of America, are paying aid to Israel while they continue their occupation of Palestinian lands. The amount varies from year to year but right now it is basically eight defaulted Solyndra loans, four days of our military actions against nations that couldn't even harm us if they wanted to, or 20% of NASA's yearly budget. All so Israeli can use their armored bulldozers to knock down houses of people who couldn't get building permits from the Israeli government.
In a time where politicians are calling for austerity measures, we should fix the budget with the knowledge that even if the Palestinians will still be screwed over by the Israelis, we won't be going further into debt with China because of it.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever read anything by Chomsky? The bibliographies are enormous. Opinion it may be, but uninformed it is not.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:3, Insightful)
He lives in an echo chamber. When a person persists in only looking at one side of an issue he is not only uninformed, he is a propagandist.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:3, Insightful)
"tax money spent in accordance with the people's wishes."
bwhahahaha. haha.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:3, Insightful)
So has Israel, and they were even ejected from UNESCO over it for awhile.
So have the Palestinians, but UNESCO didn't get involved... Do they not care about Jewish artifacts?
Either way, this article isn't about Palestine (or Israel, or anyone else in the middle east) it's about the US having a law that prevents funding for scientific and cultural pursuits for political reasons.
Funny. I see it as the Palestinians using a scientific & cultural organization (UNESCO) to obtain political gains (recognized statehood), bringing about political ramifications (de-funding of UNESCO).
a law that prevents funding for scientific and cultural pursuits for political reasons. Regardless of who the parties are, there's no good reason for such inane laws.
So, we shouldn't care that the Japanese were using POWs as guinea pigs to further their scientific research? We should just fund them and say "morals be damned."
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:USA against the World? (Score:2, Insightful)
Highly regarded by who? Have a look at UNESCO's activities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unesco [wikipedia.org]
Most people in the world will never have heard of many of those organizations. So, maybe it's time to question that.
The US pays for 22% of UNESCO's budget. What is the US tax payer getting for that? Are the activities of those organizations aligned with US interests?
Re:USA against the World? (Score:5, Insightful)
The United Nations is not an organization that has the best interests of the United States at its core.
And nor should it be, it should have the best interests of all it's members at it's core, which means that it is inevitable no member will get all their own way all the time, regardless of the size of their dick or their wallet.
It includes many members would would love to damage the USA in anyway possible.
It also includes many members that the USA has, or would like to, damage. That's the whole point; "war is the failure of politics", the cold war shows that it is essential to keep talking to your political enemies, even if it is through gritted teeth with nukes pointed at each others heads.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:3, Insightful)
One questions such apparent insanity upon our behalf, as to why we offer up such resistance to Palestinian progressives. Here we have a golden opportunity to support peaceful elements in the Palestinians who wish to just peacefully exist, and hold them accountable for their groups like Hamas. Hamas can thus be isolated with world pressure, as they run counter to the established, supported leadership which has Statehood. It's a golden opportunity for real progress in the region, but instead, we are adamant obstructionists. One has to ponder the motives of such actions.
First thing to question is why the seemingly blind and fanatical support of Israel when they have been countless found the aggressors and violating human rights. The history of creation of Israel as a state has plenty of bloodshed and corruption surrounding it. There is a displaced people involved. Let me elaborate on that in a compare and contrast situation if I may.
Ponder if you may if the UN decided that Mexico was cheated out of their land that we have, such as Texas and California. They in turn with a major superpower that dwarfed us, decided to force us out of said States and give them back to Mexico. The people that built homes, businesses, everything there, were force-ably removed. Imagine if there were incidents of massacres and murder, and brute squads harshly enforcing this decree. Could you imagine the anger that we would harbor? Some would fight, but they would be crushed. And if Canada tried to come to our rescue they would be defeated and pushed back until their lands were threatened.
This is akin to what has happened to Palestine, and I use this metaphor to try to give human understanding to their mentality and their condition. Now understand that we are the super power that has backed them with weapons and money constantly for decades to allow Israel this position. Now factor how we have been allowing Israel to continue to treat the Palestinians. We have in this country a mindset that these Palestinians are animals, and deserving of being slaughtered. This isn't a logical mindset, but we have been fed it for decades.
Consider now our actions as these Palestinians seek to regain Statehood, and to be recognized on the world stage instead of a displaced people. There are "reservations" set aside for them, but like we have done in the past to our American Natives, these lands are seen to be something to be gained by the Israelis. They just move in and start building, and if the Palestinians don't like it, they have to look down the barrel of American made tanks.
Of course there is a violent and resistive element to this whole process. If it was us, we would be just as violent if not more. But there are peaceful elements that are trying to just survive and live decent normal lives. These have a hard time gaining power in the Palestinian ranks because the people of course feel deeply wronged and the violent elements are very strong and frightening.
What we are missing here is the opportunity to prop up these peaceful elements as the whole of humanity, and disarming the situation between these two warring factions. This can be done by out powering the violent elements with outside support from the world. But there are problems, and not only with the violent elements of the Palestinians. Israel has "hawks" in power at the moment, old warhorses that hold a grudge, and thrive on the US/Israel war machine. Israel is aggressive with settlements into Palestinian "reservations".
Now this is where it gets weird. You would think that we would be trying to iron out peace and capitalizing on this opportunity. But we aren't. We are obstructing it at every phase and we are losing massive political capital in the process. It appears that we have an irrational, blind, fanatical support of Israel, turning a blind eye to whatever shenanigans that it perpetrates. This doesn't go unnoticed in the entire Middle East region and is part of how we fail diplomatically across the board there. Now the question one needs to ask
Re:USA against the World? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with "borders" is entirely Israel. The more I have looked at the history of the region, the more Israel is dead wrong and should not be supported. The Palistinians are the NATIVE residents of the region, with a claim in the real world that goes back just as far as the Jewish Bible.
What's going on is just like Apartid in South Africa or the white takeover PC Native Americans or Saddam Hussain gassing Kurds and has no place in modern society. Palistinians are native inhabitants of the land the Jews want. Many were displaced by Jewish militants, guilty of nothing more than the color of their skin and wanting to run from a war, and have been refused return to their rightful family homes. They are not part of some other Arab nation, they are residents of the political borders of Israel removed from their RIGHTFUL PROPERTY because of their race...
Just like the "Indian wars" in the USA, Settlers from Israel are building homesteads and businesses on land already under international treaty to Palistinians, then claim "terrorism" when that land is contested back. The gig is up if Palistine gets declared a "State" because then Israel gets properly accused of "invasion" rather than just run of the mill domestic oppression.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except it isn't. Would you like the UN meddling in US internal affairs? What if they 'recognized Puerto Rico as a full member? Not that we wouldn't kick em loose if they ever actually voted for independence but you see the point? The Territories are part of Israel and the UN has been hell bent on this project of erecting a new nation state inside their borders for decades now.
It's "meddling in internal affairs" if UN issues a demand to US to do something about Puerto Rico; but recognizing it? Besides, UNESCO recognition is not at all the same as UN recognition - in particular, not all UNESCO members are independent states.
I can understand the opposition to UN membership for Palestine, especially considering the extremist forces currently in power there. At least a vote in UN General Assembly bears some political weight. But UNESCO? It's an organization dedicated to education and culture. If Palestine as a member can do something useful there, why not let them in? It does not give them any real political weight where it matters.
And yes, they are part of Israel. They were ATTACKED and they won that territory fair and square in war from their enemies who had to accept that in the cease fire agreements they all signed onto and in the cases of Egypt and Jordan they have actually signed full peace treaties and ended the war on those borders. If they eventually get a deal both sides would actually live with they, and they alone, have the power to grant the territories independence. Not anyone else. Of course just today the so called 'moderate' terrorist Abbas redeclared his only acceptable borders to be the entirety of Israel so even he doesn't want to see a new nation state created as anything other than a very temporary political gambit.
Acquiring territory by conquering it has not been considered legitimate in world politics for a long time. After all, by the same token, you could claim that e.g. France was legitimately won by Nazi Germany, or that Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia was legitimately won by USSR. But U.S. has never recognized either case as legit, and for a good reason. There's this thing called "self-determination", and especially in the case where territory in question was forcibly incorporated into the state it is currently in, it is considered a good enough reason for a nation to seek independent statehood (see also: Kosovo).
Palestinians for whom the only solution is no Israel are a different story, but that is not the only faction there, and there is a far stretch from recognizing that they deserve a right to their own nation-state on at least some of their historical lands (like those where they are the majority today and have been for the last millenia or so), to "wipe Israel off the map". You - and many other Americans who are similarly radical on this matter - are doing everyone a great disservice by conflating these two points. It only serves to "prove" to less radical Palestinians that there's absolutely no hope for a peaceful resolution that can work for both sides, swinging their votes towards radicals.
Re:USA against the World? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except it isn't. Would you like the UN meddling in US internal affairs? What if they 'recognized Puerto Rico as a full member? Not that we wouldn't kick em loose if they ever actually voted for independence but you see the point? The Territories are part of Israel and the UN has been hell bent on this project of erecting a new nation state inside their borders for decades now.
So the Palestinians are Israeli nationals then? You can't make an entire population stateless at the same time you control their territory. If they aren't Israeli, Egyptian, Jordanian. or Palestinian, what right of citizenship do they have? It is interesting that you picked Puerto Rico because they have been given many chances to vote on their status. You can bet that if the Puerto Ricans wanted their own country, they would have it.
And yes, they are part of Israel. They were ATTACKED and they won that territory fair and square in war from their enemies who had to accept that in the cease fire agreements they all signed onto and in the cases of Egypt and Jordan they have actually signed full peace treaties and ended the war on those borders.
So now we have the following situation:
1) Israel controls territory it can't legally annex (for several reasons, all of which are complicated), and won't annex (for reasons which are equally complicated, one of which is mentioned below)
2) Regardless of their original status, Jordan and Egypt have renounced claims to the territory
3) Every people has the right to self-determination
I take it you would prefer to see the West Bank and Gaza simply annexed into Israel proper and their residents given full Israeli citizenship? The Fourth Geneva convention places strict limits on what rights can be denied to people living in annexed territory. Israel has no incentive to take an action which would instantly make the Jews into a political and demographic minority.
These are the two arguments I continually hear from Israel supporters and I don't think either stands to scrutiny. I'd really like a rational response to this because every time I bring this up with someone who supports Israel as much as you obviously do all I get is vitriolic and inane responses. I look forward to your reply.