Absurd state of affairs

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Transcript: Hugo Chavez Interview: Venezuelan President On Rocky Relations with Washington

Sept. 16, 2005:

Chavez: "I have friends throughout the entire world," Chavez told Ted Koppel. "Only with Washington is where the relationship doesn't work." (ABCNEWS.com)

CHAVEZ (THROUGH TRANSLATOR):Really good signals? No. You know where right now my medical team is? In the presidential plane, 200 kilometers from here. The government of the United States, in violation of the laws of the United States and conventions, prevented my doctors from coming to New York. Where is the chief of staff of my military detachment and my chief of security? On the plane. They've been locked into the plane, two days. They can't come out of the plane.

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Venezuelan President joins OUR MOVEMENT!

AP Newsday.com Top News: Chavez Takes Bush to Task Over Iraq War, By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer, September 16, 2005, 5:20 AM EDT

UNITED NATIONS -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took President Bush to task in front of a global summit for waging war in Iraq without U.N. consent and won rousing applause for his critique.

The leftist leader told a U.N. summit on Thursday that fighting the war without U.N. authorization showed Washington did not respect the world body. He recommended moving U.N. headquarters to a country that has more regard for the organization.

"There were never weapons of mass destruction but Iraq was bombed, and over U.N. objections, (it was) occupied and continues being occupied," Chavez said. Bush alleged that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but none have been found, shattering one of his main arguments for going to war.

"That's why we propose to this assembly that the United Nations leave this country, which is not respectful of the very resolutions of this assembly," Chavez said.

Chavez, a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, suggested moving U.N. headquarters New York to an international city "outside the sovereignty of any state" and said some have mentioned Jerusalem as one possibility.

But the Venezuelan leader said the new headquarters has to be in the South, home to most developing countries.

More important note this:

World leaders at the summit had been asked to speak for five minutes but Chavez ran long and when the presiding diplomat passed him a note saying his time was up, he threw it on the floor. He said if Bush could speak for 20 minutes, so could he.

Viva la Chavez.

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Sir Bob crying the wrong tune!

Sir Bob Geldof said after the UN Summit that took place yesterday that he felt "a sense of disappointment" because the UN gathering had originally been called to review progress on its Millennium Development Goals to tackle poverty and disease but had been "suborned" by other issues.

UN summit has failed Africa, says Geldof (By Andrew Grice in New York Published by The Independent: 16 September 2005)

Sir Bob singled out Canada, The Netherlands and Belgium for criticism but said other countries such as Britain, the United States and Japan could put "a little bit more in the pot".

There were two persons put in place to scuttle the entire Summit and the focus on aiding poverrty stricken nations, especially in Africa.

Both were Bush nominees. One was put there by even by-passing the US Senate Confirmation process. They are Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank and the other was John Bolton as the US Ambassador to the UN.

By putting 750 items on the agenda just a few days before the final document for the summit was due to be released, Blair and Bush effectively made sure that the focus on the Millennium Development Goals was killed.

If what is reported is correct, it is my opinion that Sir Bob is one of the biggest fools that I have heard about. He was blind and could not see that the war criminals, the poodle and the pResident, had quite different an agenda to him, and strung him along to get the publicity and then dropped him like a hot potato at their convenience!!

Sing some more Sir Bob - and let us hear some more crocodile tears.

Iranian President lashes out at US

Iranian president lashes out at US at UN summit

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday sharply criticized the United States for unilateralism and abuse of its status as the host country of the United Nations' New York headquarters.

"The host country should not enjoy any right or privilege over the rest of the membership and the organization and its headquarters must be easily accessible for all," said Ahmadinejad in an address at the UN summit.

Earlier this month there was speculation that the US administration might deny Ahmadinejad an entry visa. Last week, the speaker of the Iranian Islamic Consultative Assembly, Haddad Adel, failed to attend the Second World Conference of Speakers of Parliaments in New York because of a delay in the release of a US entry visa.

"The United Nations must have the possibility to enable all governments, civil society organizations and NGOs from all over the world to freely travel to its headquarters without the selective hindrances of the host country and to engage without anyfear in serious dialogue," Ahmadinejad stressed.

Ahmadinejad, who was elected Iran's new president in June, alsourged the United Nations to "lead in promotion of spirituality and compassion for humanity."

He criticized "unilateralism, production and use of weapons of mass destruction, intimidations, resort to the threat or use of force and imposition of destructive wars on peoples for the sake of security and prosperity of a few powers."

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Bolton and Wolfowitz success! Blair, Bono and Sir Bob suckered?

Poor nations lose in watered-down UN document

· Final draft a bland version of Gleneagles promises
· No new money for aid and debt relief

Ewen MacAskill in New York and Larry Elliott
Wednesday September 14, 2005
The Guardian

Campaigners and diplomats who favoured a bold approach put much of the blame for the failure on John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, who introduced hundreds of late changes to the original document.

Mr Bolton said he was pleased with the final draft: "This is not the alpha and omega and we never thought it would be."

The US ambassador, who had argued that UN reform was too important to be done in a rush, said: "It was only ever going to be the first step."

Tony Blair, the poodle has been properly spanked on his bottom. Irish rock star U2's Bono and Sir Bob Geldof are now shown to be the suckers they really are.

Here is a statement by Bono and Sir Bob Geldof which you will find on Sir Bob Geldof's site

Reactions from Bono and Geldof to G8 Summit

GLENEAGLES, Scotland, July 8 The following reactions by Bono and Bob Geldof were released today:

Reaction from Bono, lead singer of U2 and co-founder of DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa):

"A mountain has been climbed only to reveal high peaks north of us. But for this moment, let's stop and look back at just how far we've come. The world around us has changed. What does $50 billion mean to the poorest of the poor, $25 billion of which is going to Africa? As examples, it means the financing is in place to halve deaths from malaria by 2010. Six hundred thousand people will be alive to remember this G8 in Gleneagles who would have lost their lives to a mosquito bite. Three thousand Africans - mostly children - die every day from malaria. Every country who delivers a credible plan to put their children in school will have the money to do so.

"If the words are followed through, 9 million people across the globe will have access to lifesaving AIDS drugs, which brings us to the most important lesson learnt over the past weeks. The world spoke, and the politicians listened. Now, if the world keeps an eye out, they will keep their promises. It is down to the hundreds of thousands - indeed millions - who have assembled on this issue to make sure they don't just sign the cheque, but that they cash it. If an Irish rock star can quote Churchill, this is not the end of extreme poverty, but it is the beginning of the end."

On the US:"We always want more on the numbers but there's no questioning the man's commitment to Africa. His money on malaria has been matched leaving this President in the enviable position of leading the charge against the world's most wanted killer diseases-HIV and malaria. I wish he would have matched the European challenge on overall assistance. He has a great idea for every country with a credible plan to put African children in school but by today's numbers, the Europeans are mostly paying for it."

It emerged today that the article By Paul Blustein, Washington Post Staff Writer exposed that Cancellation for 18 Nations Seen by Some as Damaging Institutional Capacity

Full debt relief for the world's poorest countries was finally in the bag. Or so it seemed two months ago when leaders from the Group of Eight major industrial powers, at their summit in Scotland, approved a plan to cancel the debts that 18 nations, mostly in Africa, owe to international lenders such as the World Bank.

But objections to the plan are emerging as it heads toward an official vote at the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund later this month. Most notable is an internal World Bank report that warns the plan could deplete the bank's coffers so severely as to impair its ability to provide new aid for impoverished nations.

It becomes evident that the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as the head of the World Bank was not just for casual reasons, but was a clear strategy by the neocons to ensure that all aspects of helping the poorer nations would also be scuttled at the right time and at the right place.

No wonder, when you enter the term "miserable failure" in Google, the result is predictable!

US using its position to kill US!

US bars Cuba from attending New York conference

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Cuba complained to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday that the United States had barred its national assembly speaker from attending a meeting of parliamentarians at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Washington denied a visa request from Ricardo Alarcon of Cuba to attend last week's second World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, a meeting sponsored by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

While the United States. as host country for the United Nations, is obliged to give visas to foreign officials for official U.N. business, a U.S. official said the conference of parliamentarians was not a U.N. affair even though it used U.N. facilities.

Cuban Ambassador Orlando Requeijo Gual wrote Annan: "The permanent mission of Cuba to the United Nations wishes to protest strongly at the arbitrary decision and to state that it disagrees completely with the pretexts given."

The Cuban delegation was also denied visas to attend the first World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, held in New York in 2000, Requeijo Gual said.

Alarcon has applied for a visa from Washington to attend a three-day world summit at U.N. headquarters opening on Wednesday, Cuban officials said. He was expected to be granted the visa and to head the Cuban delegation, the officials said.

President Fidel Castro, who last traveled to U.N. headquarters for the 2000 Millennium Summit, was not expected in New York for this year's summit, the officials said.

On what moral basis can the UN be kept in the US?

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Repeating New Orleans around the world

Entry posted on TPM Cafe on Sep 12 2005

The plan of the Bush criminal gang is to cause a repeat of New Orleans around the world.

The way that John Bolton has been acting to make the UN ineffective as is discussed in the article in the Financial Times Envoys fight to keep UN reform package on track, by Mark Turner at the United Nations, Published: September 12 2005 03:00, it is obvious that what Bush, through his crony John Bolton, hopes to achieve is to create a New Orleans scenario around the world and to ensure that the UN is made powerless to act.

The US is pushing for fundamental reform to the way the UN is managed, by moving executive control from the General Assembly to the secretariat, but with tighter oversight and auditing.

So, if the US system was so efficient and so good, why did 9/11 take place and why has the New Orleans tragedy taken place.

Can John Bolton and George Bush lay the blame on the doorstep of the UN?

The only solution is to MOVE THE UN NOW!

Bolton's strategy exposed

UN fears an unhappy birthday as rows threaten summit
The UN aimed to mark its 60th anniversary with deep reforms. Instead, rows overshadow this week's huge gathering of world leaders.

By Anne Penketh
Published: 12 September 2005

"One of the main questions in the negotiating room concerns the intentions of the US delegation, with the French specifically raising the issue. There have been widespread fears since the appointment of John Bolton as US ambassador that he has been dispatched to the UN to sabotage the summit. The sudden tabling of 750 US amendments to the draft declaration did nothing to assuage those fears.

Non-governmental organisations sounded the alarm about a possible collapse of the negotiations last week after Mr Bolton called a number of UN missions to say: "I don't want give and take. If we disagree, we disagree." That held echoes of his earlier negotiating record as chief US arms control officer, when he was quoted as saying: "I don't do carrots." "

Stand up to these cowardly bullies. MOVE THE UN NOW!

Bolton / Bush dirty work

The Uniter Bush achieves his ultimate through his dirty work accomplice, John Bolton.

World summit on UN's future heads for chaos

UK leads last minute effort to rein in US objections

Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Saturday September 10, 2005
The Guardian

The British government is mounting a huge diplomatic effort this weekend to prevent the biggest-ever summit of world leaders, designed to tackle poverty and overhaul the United Nations, ending in chaos.
The Guardian has learned that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, has made a personal plea to his American counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, for the US to withdraw opposition to plans for wholesale reform of the UN. He has asked Ms Rice to rein in John Bolton, the US ambassador to the world body.


Mr Bolton has thrown the reform negotiations into disarray by demanding a catalogue of late changes to a 40-page draft document which is due to go before the summit in New York on Wednesday.
Mr Bolton, one of the US administration hawks, became ambassador last month only after a long confrontation with the US senate, mainly caused by his ideological dislike of the UN.

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Migrating to US? Think twice!

Entry posted on TPM Cafe on Sep 08, 2005 at 13:35 CET

Being from Kerala, it is from my main blog Jacob's Blog for today

UN hits back at US in report saying parts of America are as poor as Third World, by Paul Vallely, Published: 08 September 2005 in the British newspaper "The Independent" is certainly given immediate validity by those of us who have watched the New Orleans and surrounding area tragedy caused by Hurricane Katrina unfold.

Here are some comment key points contained in this latest UN Report on World Poverty:

"Parts of the United States are as poor as the Third World, according to a shocking United Nations report on global inequality....

The annual Human Development Report normally concerns itself with the Third World, but the 2005 edition scrutinises inequalities in health provision inside the US as part of a survey of how inequality worldwide is retarding the eradication of poverty.

It reveals that the infant mortality rate has been rising in the US for the past five years - and is now the same as Malaysia. America's black children are twice as likely as whites to die before their first birthday.......

But the 370-page document is critical of American policies towards poverty abroad as well as at home. And, in unusually outspoken language, it accuses the US of having "an overdeveloped military strategy and an under-developed strategy for human security".

"There is an urgent need to develop a collective security framework that goes beyond military responses to terrorism," it continues. " Poverty and social breakdown are core components of the global security threat.".......

India and China, the UN says, have been very successful in wealth creation but have not enabled the poor to share in the process.....

Blacks in Washington DC have a higher infant death rate than people in the Indian state of Kerala."

More important, it is not only in poverty that US is in tandem with the Third World - it also matches it in being a Banana Republic filled with corrupt or compliant politicians who care a damn whhether or not their constituents are drowned in water, blood or debt.