Tuesday, June 19, 2018

US to Withdraw from UN Human Rights Council in Response to Condemnation


This is another example of the fundamentally illiberal government we are seeing from the Trump administration, but also from other governments under "strong men" across the world.
Matthew Lee and Josh Lederman (AP) (2018, June 19) US poised to announce exit from UN human rights council. Yahoo. Available https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-poised-announce-exit-un-human-rights-council-155923454--politics.html
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is set to announce Tuesday its departure from the United Nations' main human rights body in its latest withdrawal from an international institution.... No country has ever dropped out voluntarily.
No more liberal internationalism in the government of human rights?


There is a fundamental shift in governance occurring across many terrains, including energy, weapons development, and human rights.

If you aren't worried then you aren't paying attention.

Let's take the example of immigrant child separations. In the past, under Bush and Obama, immigration contractors would use separations as a threat to get detainees to cooperate. I described the detention facilities owned by contractors incarcerating immigrants in my book Governing Childhood here.

Now, that tactic formerly deployed only (or at least primarily) for punishment has become encoded as a routine operational logic.

What does it mean when punishment is the strategic objective? What can it mean for social life in a context of ecological disarray?

Human rights, however limited, are now under threat of dissolving altogether in many different social fields.


13 comments:

  1. Your entry suggests a shift with Trump; and yet what do we do with Libya, not to mention the US role in starting a civil war in Syria, etc. I once thought well of the UN but that was a long time ago.

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  2. https://nuclear-news.net/2018/06/20/usas-nuclear-weapons-companies-need-the-nuclear-weapons-race-to-continue/

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  3. "This is another example of the fundamentally illiberal government we are seeing from the Trump administration, but also from other governments under "strong men" across the world." Isn't this more a political remark than one actually aimed at genuine human rights? Looking at the current state members one could hardly be optimistic about what might come out of this council. Pakistan? Afghanistan? Mexico? China? We had eight years of war with Obama, but the liberals were okay about that for the most part. Again why are the Democrats so silent about child sex trafficking? In the IG report there is mention of the Clinton Foundation being involved with that. Is anyone going to dig into that bit of information? I feel like almost all the outrage over human rights is strictly with the November elections. When Maddow takes in a half dozen children from the border I will take note. Simply creating something called a council on human rights means nothing.

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  4. Dalai Lama
    @DalaiLama
    ·
    Jun 19
    Prayer by itself is not sufficient to bring about peace of mind. What is much more effective is coming to understand the workings of the mind and learning how to tackle the mental afflictions that disturb it.

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    Replies
    1. It depends on the individual. Buddhism is excellent, but my contact with Tibetan Buddhism has not left me with the best impression.

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  5. I try to find high quality sources of information. [Probably the result of being educated while universities still endeavored to turn out educated men and women--pre 1966.] Below is a short video by a former professor of classical languages.

    *Victor D. Hanson: The 4 Groups that Benefit from Illegal Immigration*
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrt9k-GJEMA

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  6. You are not educated. Narcissist troll

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  7. At least the UN got a nuclear weapons ban through

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  8. If you really want to know what is happening, instead of your fantasies and dreams, watch this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-s2518gIAI

    Not being accustomed to erudition it could cause you to feel uncomfortable thoug.

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  9. 1 trillion on more insanity. SPACE FORCE HIGHLIGHTS FROM beyond Nuclear International
    https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2018/06/20/is-space-for-wonder-or-for-war

    Last time the Trump White House tried this, Pentagon officials objected, saying it would “lead to unnecessary costs and bureaucracy.” Maybe. What’s far far worse is that it would lead to unnecessary wars.

    Have we lost all reason? Are we supposed, now, to lose all hope as well? Space is for wonder. It’s where we live. We are a small dot in the midst of enormity, floating in a dark vastness about which we know a surprising amount, and yet with so much more still mysteriously unknown.

    We used to be able to gaze up into space and pretend to count the infinitesimal stars. Now, cloaked in the haze of light pollution, we actually can — maybe a dozen or so on a non-cloudy night for those of us who live in cities. We have lost our perspective, our sense of where we fit in the universe. Light pollution is a tragedy that has allowed us to forget who we are. It has drawn a veil over the
    Space as a warfighting domain is the latest obscenity in a long list of vile actions by a vile administration. We know what they are.
    Missile defense or missile madness? (Photo: SM-3 launch, US Navy.)
    “The US has gone mad,” said Dr. Helen Caldicott, godmother of the anti-nuclear movement who wrote a book on the subject of space conflict — War in Heaven. Caldicott is not known for mincing words, and now is not the time to mince them. It is time to call out wrong in the most urgent way possible, as Cummings did.

    “With 800 bases in 70 countries; the biggest exporter of weapons to the world; involved in numerous wars around the world; about to spend $1.7 trillion replacing every single nuclear weapon and delivery system over 30 years;
    A Space Force is not an aspiration unique to Trump megalomania, of course, but it feels worse in his reckless hands. And it is worse because of the tacit acceptance the plan has received, as if it is just a natural extension of bellicosity on Earth, an inevitable boys-will-be-boys toy.

    Not content to make large parts of our world a living hell (Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, Palestine, Congo…the list goes on), now we want to cast fear and terror into the heavens as well. And this aspiration is cloaked in ominous rhetoric. Trump says America “must have dominance in space.” He is a Bond villain with the nuclear button.

    A Space Force is not about GPS and weather satellites, despite what military spokesmen might say. Or even about spying. It’s about preparation for war. And that war will include nuclear weapons. If we fight wars— and especially nuclear wars — in space, we are finished as a species.

    What’s most worrying about all the attention this has garnered is that the objections expressed have been all about cost and bureaucracy and disrupting the smooth-flowing operations of the Air Force. Where is the moral voice here?

    Karl Grossman, writer and presenter of the TV documentary “Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens” and author of the books The Wrong Stuff and Weapons in Space, says a Space Force would mean “the heavens would become a war zone.” Inevitably, he said, “if the US goes up into space with weapons, Russia and China, and then India and Pakistan and other countries, will follow.”

    It would mean, said, Grossman, that “the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 which designated space as the global commons to be used for peaceful purposes — and of which Russia and China, as well as the US, are parties — and the years of work since facilitating the treaty would be wasted.”

    And there would be nukes in space. We may not fight each other with nuclear missiles, but the space weaponry would be nuclear-powered said Grossman. He recalled how “Reagan’s Star Wars scheme was to be powered with nuclear reactors and plutonium systems on orbiting battle platforms providing the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons. This is what would be above our heads.”

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    1. Human beings are so proud of their scientists; and their engineers. We recognize them with Nobel Prizes and good salaries. So can we be surprised? I'm not. Imagine that you have a PhD in physics; or in electrical engineering. You get chosen to work on this vast project! Who would turn it down? Think of all the spin off such a project would create. For many this would be a big dream come true. People now are no different than they were when the Manhattan Project took off--and was that operation moral? I believe a few scientists quit at some point. Oppenheimer quoting from the Bhagavad Gita: I have become death, the destroyer of worlds. A good motto for scientists and engineers?

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  10. How School Makes Kids Dumb

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLSv17iE_4Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLSv17iE_4Q

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  11. How the st george troll is a hippocrit full of hot wind

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