Speaking to the U.N.

World leaders recently gathered at the U.N. headquarters in New York City to exchange ideas on how to move forward into the 21st century. The speeches of Bush, Ahmadinejad and Chavez were given the most coverage, though not necessarily for the right reasons. Morales of Bolivia tried to upstage Chavez by smuggling in a coca leaf; this gimmick was drowned in angry replies to Chavez’s correlation of president Bush with a whiff of brimstone. As usual, the media made the most noise about the least significant occurrences, assuming that people can’t handle analysis of any depth of boring U.N. speeches.

George Bush

President Bush Addresses U.N. General Assembly (Washington Post) includes a full transcript of one of the better speeches Bush has given recently. He was most definitely in “lefty” mode, espousing ideas of freedom and peace that belong to a possible future for most of us, but are firmly anchored in reality for him. His is a world of bright white light and deep darkness, with light surging forth from our continent in an unstoppable holy storm; for him, the battle is nearly won. It’s all over but the shouting and there’s just a few niggling details to mop up before the US can settle back and enjoy a well-earned rest.

If You Say it Enough…

He acknowledges the well-known fact that most people don’t have the special rose-colored glasses he wears and obliges by providing a brief summary of things as he sees them.

“Since then, the enemies of humanity have continued their campaign of murder. Al Qaida and those inspired by its extremist ideology have attacked more than two dozen nations. And recently a different group of extremists deliberately provoked a terrible conflict in Lebanon.”

Al Qaeda is clearly more dangerous than anyone else as they’ve attacked dozens of countries, whereas we’ve only attacked two or so. And Hizbollah was completely and entirely at fault for the ass-whupping handed to Lebanon by Israel. So now you know. Given this world-view, Bush feels confident in addressing the oppressed of the world and implores them to ignore the propaganda of the enemy, which is misleading them from the great truth.

“While your peers in other parts of the world have received educations that prepare them for the opportunities of a global economy, you have been fed propaganda and conspiracy theories that blame others for your country’s shortcomings.”

It is with statements such as these that Bush seems bound and determined to prove that irony is indeed dead—at least for him. It would be amusing to see how much of this speech Chavez could repurpose without changing anything—Bush could just as easily have been talking about his precious homeland. He continues in lefty mode, acknowledging the role of desperation in breeding terror.

“We know that when people have a voice in their future, they are less likely to blow themselves up in suicide attacks. We know that when leaders are accountable to their people, they are more likely to seek national greatness in the achievements of their citizens, rather than in terror and conquest.”

So, yeah, he gets it. Or at least his speechwriter does. He just doesn’t seem to give a shit for more than the half an hour or it takes him to deliver the speech. Then it’s right back to robbing people of their voices—both at home and abroad.

Sincerity

The last statement from Bush above is indisputable and would be a good sign if uttered by almost anyone else. In Bush’s case, however, the sentiment and world-view expressed therein is in such stark contrast to all of his prior actions and words. This sentence trips more convincingly from a tongue which hasn’t seen so many dirty, dirty places. This is, at best, lip service to the U.N., which has no correlation or firm anchor in Bush’s world. With a terse defense of Israel’s summer war under his belt, he continues to bolster Israel by declaring that he’s “committed to a Palestinian state that has territorial integrity and will live peacefully with the Jewish state of Israel. (emphasis added)” Once again, Bush and his Brain have dropped a meme into the mainstream of American thought, in an attempt to properly frame the Middle East. This time they’re changing the focus from two countries to one country and a state with territorial integrity … whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.

Since it’s a new term, he’s free to assign whatever definition he likes to it, including definitions that promise far, far less than the rest of the U.N. would like. In this way, he’s managed to very cautiously create a new type of state entity to avoid claiming a whole country for the Palestinians. On the other hand—and, on the bright side—he stated publicly that “[t]he Palestinian people have suffered from decades of corruption and violence and the daily humiliation of occupation” (emphasis added). This is either the first time or one of the very rare times that an American president or member of the state department has acknowledged Israel’s role as occupier. Since the U.S. has vetoed dozens of U.N. resolutions declaring exactly that (often voting against every single other country in the U.N. other than Israel and sometimes Great Britain), he may have just been taunting them with an unofficial acknowledgment.

In his closing arguments, he continued to offer tantalizing glimpses into his private world, in which up is down, black is white and war is peace. He tells the U.N. that “[f]freedom, by its nature, cannot be imposed. … It must be chosen” as if he is any way the proper messenger for this missive. He continues by reminding the nations of the world that “America has made its choice. We will stand with the moderates and reformers.” Amazingly enough, this comment didn’t even draw the most laughs of the evening, which goes to show how jaded those U.N. diplomats are—and how dead-set they are against down-home, Texan humor.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks to the U.N. General Assembly (Washington Post) is a transcript translated from Farsi by a UN translator. As has become customary, he spoke of his primary enemy obliquely, depicting the actions and aims of “some” nations instead of just naming the US directly. And, though he begins with “praise [for] the almighty”, who is actively promoted by his government and a long, reverent soliloquy about “new generations and the spirited youth”, which are actively suppressed by his government, he settles in quickly to describe the world situation as he and his allies see it.

“By causing war and conflict, some are fast expanding their domination, accumulating greater wealth and usurping all the resources, while others endure the resulting poverty, suffering and misery.”

It’s rather clear which nation (or, at best, nations, including Britain) he’s talking about. Since the pain his own government causes is primarily inflicted on its own people, he has the luxury of recognizing the world situation with a good deal more honesty than Bush (who actively ignores the harm the US does in the world in order to continue believing that the US is a pure force for good). Clearly, Ahmadinejad’s description can be much more easily reconciled with the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the continuing eradication of the Palestinian people, also cheerily supported by the US. It is these issues that primarily concern Iran and the rest of the Muslim world and it is on these issues that the US clearly has no moral leg to stand on.

On Nuclear Ambitions

Ahmadinejad continues by addressing the issue of nuclear weapons in the world head-on: Iran has, as yet, zero weapons, complies with the IAEA and is a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT); for this they are marked a dire threat upon which an America-led attack is seen to be imminent. In his own words:

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is a member of the IAEA and is committed to the MPT (sic). All our nuclear activities are transparent, peaceful, and under the watchful eyes of the IAEA inspectors.”

Naturally, there are those with strong suspicions that this isn’t the whole story; as yet, however, there is not a shred of evidence contradicting Iran’s rosy depiction of its nuclear aspirations. On the other hand, Pakistan and India are not signatories to any nuclear treaties and developed their weapons illegally in the late 90s. On top of that, they have barely avoided attacking each other with their newly acquired toys not once, but twice. The US welcomes both as close allies. The US itself abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (or ABM, a pact made primarily with the USSR), which was dedicated to a measured reduction in nuclear capacity, several years ago. They are considering officially dropping out of the NPT—officially because the US has already acknowledged that it is one of the nations developing “second and third generations of nuclear weapons” and directly contravening the NPT. He asks:

“What do they [the US] need these weapons for? Is the development and stockpiling of these deadly weapons designed to promote peace and democracy or are these weapons, in fact, instruments of coercion and threat against other peoples and governments?”

That the US demands that Iran stop pursuing the bomb are ludicrous is evident to all but the US … and perhaps Britain. The US is literally the last country on Earth that should be calling out Iran for its alleged nuclear ambitions.

Accountability

After Ahmadinejad provided evidence of the US’s moral failings, he proceeded to the main thrust of his speech: addressing the lack of accountability for Britain and the US in the current UN Security Council. Chavez would later address exactly the same point. He asks why a country like Iran is a priori excluded from the council, while the US rules it like a feudal lord … a question that answers itself, if you’re cynical enough. He twists the knife by pointing out that the US is itself far from a shining beacon of democracy as it pursues its warrior strategies that are so consistently against the will of its own people. Indeed, the US picks and chooses which democracies it even recognizes, according the the age-old “what’s in it for me?” criteria. As exhibit A, Ahmadinejad presents the Hamas-led government in Palestine and asks how the US reconciles its treatment of this government with its purported principles of democracy.

“a government is formed democratically and through the free choice of the electorate in a part of the Palestinian territory. But instead of receiving the support of the so-called champions of democracy, its ministers and its members of parliament are illegally abducted and incarcerated, in full view of the international community.”

As further proof that something is rotten with the security council—and, indeed, the entire UN attitude toward the Arab world—he describes the Israeli abduction of over 60 Hamas parliament members at the beginning of the summer. The US sprang quickly to the fore to knock down any possible sanctions, recrimination or even official chiding from the UN—as it has done nearly countless times before. Thus, the world’s strongest defender (and exporter) of democracy did everything in its power to show its preference for one democracy[1] over another. The legitimate question raised is what kind of a global organization can be controlled to such a great degree by one country. A pretty crappy one, it seems. Despite all of the US’s more radical representatives’ calls for the dismantling of the UN, it is—and has nearly always been—a thin mantle providing a threadbare semblance of legitimacy to US hegemony.

“When the power behind the hostilities is itself a permanent member of the Security Council, how then can this council fulfill its responsibilities? … How can they be held accountable before the international community? And are the inhabitants of these countries content with the waste of their wealth and their resources on the production of such destructive arsenals? … The prevailing order of contemporary global interaction is such that certain powers equate themselves with the international community and consider their decisions superseding that of over 180 countries. … Can a council in which they are privileged members address their violations? Has this ever happened?”

In effect, the UN has a massive blind spot when it comes to violent actions engendered by one of the permanent members of the security council. If Iran acts up, they get sanctions and lots of little blue helmets bobbing around their borders. If China, Russia, Britain, France or the US act up, they can just veto any punishment, regardless of whether the other 187 countries agreed on it or not. It gets really interesting to dig back through the record and see who’s actually wielded this veto power. Most Americans would guess China and Russia to be the dirty, underhanded bastards that are undermining the otherwise democratic nature of the UN. They would be wrong. The US is far and away the leader in vetoes, with Britain taking a distant, distant second. The US has used the loophole more often than all other countries combined (times 5) in order to effectively rule the UN.

So what’s the solution? Reform the UN. Make it, in actuality, the representative of world opinion that many think it already to be. Ahmadinejad doesn’t quite go that far. He opts for a more classic settlement: “Me too.”

“In the interim, the nonaligned movement, the organization of the Islamic conference, and the African continent should each have a representative as a permanent member of the Security Council, with veto privilege.”

Tsk, tsk. And he was sounding so reasonable, with all of his fancy talk of “no more veto privileges” when his proposal boils down to “we want veto privileges too … then it’s a democracy”. And, just to make it clear that he sees a future in which the East and West work together, he pleads: “[i]s it not possible to build a better world based on monotheism, justice, love and respect for the rights of human beings and thereby transform animosities into friendship?” Now there’s something we have in common with Iran—the need to designate monotheism as a basic building block of the human condition. The rest of Asia, which is leaning more toward atheism, pantheism or Buddhism, can take a flying leap.

Hugo Chavez

An actual translated transcript of the Chavez speech was a good deal more difficult to find, as most of the news media seemed happy enough quoting his jokes about Bush being the devil[2]. He brought it on himself as he gave a speech that was more talked about than listened to. Address to the United Nations: Rise Up Against the Empire by Hugo Chavez (CounterPunch) has a semi-transcript. Hugo got off to a rockin’ start with a shout-out to Noam Chomsky[3]. He, launched into the meat of his speech with a succinct summary of the Bush doctrine.

“They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that’s imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.”

Mirroring the president of Iran, he clearly states that these military actions are the will of the government, not the people; as Chomsky himself says: “public policy is not aligned with public opinion”. If that is the case (and many, many, many national polls say that it is), then the American people are not democratically represented by their government. The purported exporter of democracy doesn’t even have its own house in order, governmentally speaking. If the government of the US doesn’t represent the will of its people, then who does it represent? What are its real goals?

“But the government doesn’t want peace. The government of the United States doesn’t want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.”

Coup, Coup

And, so, Chavez quickly arrives at the main purpose of his speech—UN reform (not coincidentally also the main purpose of Ahmadinejad’s speech). He, too, explicitly called for removal of “the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of the Security Council”. Chavez’s concerns about the US vetoing its own anti-democratic actions are not merely abstract: with his notorious bombast, he notifies the UN that the US—through its favorite proxy, the CIA—is already more-than-active in Venezuela. Whereas the CIA has for decades been the number-one media presence in many South American countries, it has no compunctions about using far more physical means of coercion. This isn’t a “Hugo” conspiracy theory; it’s already happened at least once.

“The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists. … Venezuela joins that struggle, and that’s why we are threatened. The U.S. has already planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.”

Some of the leaders of this prior coup are still at large and “are here today in this country protected by the American government.” Chavez takes the opportunity—as Ahmadinejad did—to put the hypocrisy of the US on display for everyone at the UN. Terrorists that work directly for the US government and serve our noble and just causes need know no fear of extradition. There are literally dozens of cases like this, from Cubans who blew up civilian airliners for the CIA to Henry Kissinger, directly responsible for both Chile’s and Cambodia’s worst decades and who is wanted in several countries, but who remains not only at large, but also incredibly influential. John Negroponte, who has swung from one lucrative limb of “public service” to another recently, was never tried for his role as CIA ringleader in the war on the Sandanistas conducted in Nicaragua. Even when the World Court found him and the US guilty, the US simply exercised its veto to dispatch the annoying gnat of justice.

Wrap-up

All in all, a good round of speeches at the UN this year. Whether the approach of demanding, as publicly as possible, that the US put its money where its mouth is, will bear any fruit whatsoever, remains to be seen.