The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Bolton making waves at the (inept) UN
Via an AlertNet article, Sean over at Everything I Know is Wrong finds that John Bolton is really stirring up things over at the United Nations with his call for sorely-needed reform:
John Bolton seems to be raising some hackles by pushing hard for reform at the United Nations.
AlertNet
The simmering conflict between Washington and the developing nations that make up a majority of U.N. members boiled to the surface this week when two U.S. congressmen said nonaligned states had "worked feverishly in New York to block the efforts ... to clean up the institution."
"We and our colleagues in the House of Representatives have followed, and will continue to follow, your actions very closely, and we intend to hold you accountable for them," Republican Henry Hyde of Illinois and Democrat Tom Lantos of California wrote South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo in a letter circulated at the United Nations on Friday.
Kumalo, chairman of a bloc of 132 developing nations and China, which is inexplicably called the Group of 77, responded by insisting that the group would... not respond.
Kumalo... said the group had been "very, very upset" by the letter but had decided at a hastily called emergency meeting not to respond to it.
He continued with his non-response.
"They [the U.S.] are just one of 191 parliaments," Kumalo said. "They were upset. We were upset. You can play that game endlessly."
Following the "endless" theme, Kumalo had still more to say in his remarkably responsive refusal to respond.
"The mistake being made by Washington is to assume management reform matters only to Washington. It matters to all of us," he told Reuters.
Perhaps, but by resisting Bolton's push for reform Kumalo makes it seem as though, to them, the thing that matters most about reform—is stopping it.
John Bolton seems to be raising some hackles by pushing hard for reform at the United Nations.
AlertNet
The simmering conflict between Washington and the developing nations that make up a majority of U.N. members boiled to the surface this week when two U.S. congressmen said nonaligned states had "worked feverishly in New York to block the efforts ... to clean up the institution."
"We and our colleagues in the House of Representatives have followed, and will continue to follow, your actions very closely, and we intend to hold you accountable for them," Republican Henry Hyde of Illinois and Democrat Tom Lantos of California wrote South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo in a letter circulated at the United Nations on Friday.
Kumalo, chairman of a bloc of 132 developing nations and China, which is inexplicably called the Group of 77, responded by insisting that the group would... not respond.
Kumalo... said the group had been "very, very upset" by the letter but had decided at a hastily called emergency meeting not to respond to it.
He continued with his non-response.
"They [the U.S.] are just one of 191 parliaments," Kumalo said. "They were upset. We were upset. You can play that game endlessly."
Following the "endless" theme, Kumalo had still more to say in his remarkably responsive refusal to respond.
"The mistake being made by Washington is to assume management reform matters only to Washington. It matters to all of us," he told Reuters.
Perhaps, but by resisting Bolton's push for reform Kumalo makes it seem as though, to them, the thing that matters most about reform—is stopping it.
