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The rise of the G20 was only one of the defining moments in international relations to grab headlines in the past week.
The other was the lingering absurdity of the United Nations General Assembly. It was here that Libya’s Muammer Gaddafi arrived, scratched “We are here” on his Assembly seat then held forth for a rambling 100 minutes (somewhat in excess of the 15 minutes alotted to each speaker).
As The Times reported:
The Libyan translator matched the “Brother Leader of the Revolution” word-for-word for 90 minutes before collapsing from exhaustion, just after Mr Gaddafi denounced the popular Ottawa Treaty outlawing landmines.
“A mine is a defensive weapon. If you put it there, you come to it. I put it along the border of my country. If you want to invade me then you may be killed,” Mr Gaddafi said.
The translator broke down as the man once denounced by Ronald Reagan as the “mad man” of the desert embarked on a tirade about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an explanation of his call for a single-state solution called “Isratine”.
Kevin Rudd would speak soon, but first, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who concluded his usual confection of persecution and velied anti-Semitism:
The world is in the process of change and transformation. God’s promised destiny for mankind is the pure existence of humanity. The day will come that justice will become all encompassing and global and every individual will be honored and revered. It is then that the path of human excellence will open before humankind and people will move toward becoming Divine creatures reflecting the Divine attributes of God. Human beings should reach a point that they become manifestations of “knowledge and wisdom”, “mercy and forgiving”, “justice and fairness”, “power and ethics” and “charity and kindness” of God.
All this can be attained when humanity reaches its zenith and the last Divine resource, a progeny of the beloved prophet of Islam, Imam Mahdi (peace be upon him) will appear and so will Jesus, son of Mary (peace be upon him) and all other righteous people who will assist him in this great global endeavor and this is the very idea of awaiting a savior. Awaiting the government of the good and the righteous which is the hope of all people for the betterment of the world. They shall come and with the aid of the pious and the righteous will fulfill the historical ideals of human beings for freedom, excellence, growth, security and tranquility, peace and magnificence. They shall come to end war and aggression and bestow knowledge, morality and friendship on all humankind. Yes, (and indeed) yes, a bright future lies ahead for humanity.
The G20 and the UN General Assembly. Only one of these two is making sense.
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18 Comments
In New York and in the most disgraceful speech by a sitting US President in living memory, and to add insult to injury, at the UN General Assembly, Obama apparently proudly declared the Post American World whilst apologising for US foreign policy throughout history prior to the last 9 months.
His abominable speech made the likelihood of an Israeli preemptive strike on Iran within 6 months almost inevitable.
Now that’s what I would call a little more remarkable than a commentary on the absurd Gaddafi, the real guilty party of Lockerbie, who it should be noted loves Obama and of whom he said in his rambling diatribe, he hopes becomes US President for life.
The deafening silence of the MSM (and Crikey) to Obama’s speech is the real story of the UN Con-fest last week.
JamesK, Obama telling the rest of the world that America can’t be expected to fix everything, and to pull their own weight is what you call an apology? John Howard used to call that principle ‘mutual obligation’.
It’s a real stretch for you to tie that sentiment to a trigger for pre-emptive war. This isn’t 2001, JamesK, the world will not suffer those sorts of lies and artificial timelines again. If the Israelis would be so stupid as to start a war, then honestly they deserve whatever comes back at them.
Iran, on the other hand, is completely surrounded by hostile states, has no friends among the world powers, and hasn’t attacked another country in hundreds of years. Were they ever to build a nuclear weapon, they would be more than aware that using it would lead to the destruction and dissolution of their state.
They are already a politically destabalised country. Demographics and a reform minded youth will soon propagate their shift towards social freedom and democracy.
Hey James is your ’ key broken? What is going on!
Hold on, I’ll JamesK-ify JamesK’s own post.
In New York and in the most disgraceful speech by a sitting US President in living memory, and to add ”insult” to injury, at the UN General Assembly, Obama apparently proudly ‘declared’ the Post American World whilst apologising for US foreign ‘policy’ throughout history prior to the ”last” 9 months.
His abominable ”speech” made the likelihood of an Israeli ”preemptive” strike on Iran within 6 months almost inevitable.
Now that’s what I would call a little more remarkable than a ”commentary” on the ”absurd” Gaddafi, the ”real” guilty party of ”Lockerbie”, who it should be noted ”loves” Obama and ”of” ”whom” ”he” ”said” ”in” ”his” ”rambling” ”diatribe”, ”he” ”hopes” ”becomes” ”US” ”President” ”for” ”life”.
The ”deafening” silence of the MSM (and Crikey) to ”Obama”’s speech is ”the” ”real” ”story” ”of” ”the” ”UN” ”Con-fest” ”last week”.
Decided to stop MPM’ify my posts Daniel? I suppose I should applaud this as progress.
Disappointing to see you revert to your familiar silly strategy which characteristically aims to express barely a sentence of your own, admittedly distracted, thinking in a post of several paragraphs of others quotations.
Irony indeed that the principle by which you contribute summarised by Wilde: “Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit”, seems to be what you are criticising me for.
Incidentally Daniel, I don’t think Wilde was really recommending this as a technique even to those, like yourself, who patently who lack said wit.
@Jeebus. It is false to suggest that Obama is a multilateralist, while Bush was a preemptive unilateralist. Most of these unilateralist charges were exaggerated, and based on elite anger in the West over the Iraq War and the European arrogance over Bush’s colloquial Texan and his skepticism of cap-and-trade.
Anyone who doubts the Obama outreach approach is not de facto against working with allies or automatic militarists.
The strawman you have chosen to fight it is not the principle critique at all.
He threw Israel under the bus. He did the usual moral equivalence nonsense. He was naive. He pledged to stop America torturing people as if America was not already a signatory to such international standards of warfare. He refused to single any nation out but called for adherence to nuclear non-proliferation obligations when he already knew secretly for 10 months that Iran had been lying to the IAEA.
Worst of all was the most extravagant self-worship we have yet seen in a leader of a western democracy in an address to the world (and that includes Paul Keating at his most lovable and Rudd at his most despicable).
Ahmadinejad is the gradually winning the battle for the minds of those increasing number of people around the globe who have stopped believing the US’s position on the Middle East.
His appearance in many Google posts being interviewed by MSNBC et al show him to be a very clever guy, who is playing the media game to great advantage over the US et al. The Pentagon & the State Department must be pissed off in the extreme that a free internet service i.e. Google is negating their millions of dollars spent on disinforming the world on one of the US’s & the free world’s ‘enemies….but then they did actually miss the end of the Cold War, so anything is possible from these blundering behemoths.
Just how the US mainstream media continually misreport Ahmadinejad’s remarks about Israel, and expect that it’s not going to be noticed, is a cause for wonder.but then they are under the thumb of persons like our Rupert, who in turn is in the service of ….well, the highest bidder.
The US 60 minutes program got caught out badly in its attempt to pander to the increasingly shrill far right wing Zionist lobby in the US. Check out the Google coverage of it.
I’m sure Gaddafi’s endorsement is one that Obama could have done without! I haven’t heard the loonies in the US jumping on that yet, but I’m sure it will only aid the hysteria that so oddly surrounded the health care debate at present.
JamesK, it was arrogant to justify a pre-emptive invasion with blatant lies, and to completely undermine the UN in the process. I can’t think of any European nation that has committed an act of equivalent arrogance against the global community over the last few decades.
You call it ‘elite anger’ in order to dismiss that view as having come from an out of touch minority. I guess Australia must be a pretty elite nation, because 80% of us were against the Iraq war from the beginning.
I never suggested that riling against Obama’s foreign policy makes one a warmongering unilateralist… It’s just a coincidence that you happen to be.
Threw Israel under a bus - waaawaaa. He was naive - waaawaaa.
Pledged to stop America torturing people - McCain had exactly the same policy.
The call for adherence to non-proliferation was aimed at a much broader audience than Iran. In case you haven’t noticed, there are 9 nuclear weapon states, including your beloved Israel, at whom the disarmament treaty is directed. Wow, Obama focused on real weapons, as opposed to the imaginary Iraqi - whoops, I mean Iranian nukes you are so terrified of.
‘Worst of all was the most extravagent self worship… yadda yadda’. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin was attacking the President of the US from foreign soil in her address to the Chinese. Who has the messiah complex indeed. Were Obama to have tried that he would have been lynched faster than a Dixie Chick.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5362126/who-does-he-think-hes-kidding.thtml
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100011129/barack-at-the-un-was-this-obama%E2%80%99s-most-naive-speech-ever/
http://www.mrc.org/biasalert/2009/20090924031458.aspx
Jeebus yet again creates strawmen; tells the world what I said and then patheticlly derides that. The fact that I made no such point is mere detail.
He propounds “waaawaaa…… waaawaaa…..yadda yadda” by way of meaningful debate. Perhaps he should conjugally join Daniel in the pantheon of master-debaters?
At least he does not contradict my primary argument.
The MSM commentary on this woeful speech was as quiet as the implications for Israel and other western cultural democracies are monumental.
Given the liberal MSM bias, imagine if the speech had even reached the dizzy heights of even just being merely pedestrian in quality and moderately narcissistically restrained ?
JamesK, you’re the laziest demagogue I’ve ever met. Your posts and thought processes are basically cut-and-paste from your blog links, creatively peppered with the usual loony-right rhetoric.
It’s finally clear now as to why you’re unable to respond to or make logical arguments outside the narrow scope of your group-think resources.
And you Jeebus are restricted to personnal attacks, I mean seriously, are you the best the extreme looney left has to offer.
You were obviously some loner at school who read Tin Tin in the library at lunch and has ever since carried a chip on our shoulder (and probably has a secret list of people who ‘hurt’ you), but then, I am getting into your territory, personnally attacking someone for having a different opinion (please don’t put me on your list).
Try sticking to the points Jeebus - if you have any - and don’t resort to personal attacks just because someone is getting the better of you.
Hahahaha! More like the lingering absurdity of the 3 of you. JamesK, Jeebus and Pedro, you have all complained about personal attacks; and then made one. Well done one and all.
Aim to please
Of course - I am making the assupmtion that you realise I was being ironic by criticising him Evan Beaver - you did get that, right…?
Nah, you’ve got to use the irony font for it to count.
@Evan - Good call.
@Pedro - Start a Myspace page why don’t you.
Jeebus, are saying something - am I on your list now?
I note more leftist liberal luvvie absurdity such as the kind that relies on reading into rather than just merely actually reading others posts.
The kind that flashes a 2 line smart arse belated entrée into a debate for apparently only purely inflated self importance reasons and which, predictably for Evan, contributes nil to the debate.
The kind Evan Beaver makes often with an almost painful inevitability.
Evan demonstrate from whence you make the blindingly prescient observation that I have “complained about personal attacks”.
I say prescient considering you clearly did not actually read my posts.
I know ascertaining basic facts is deemed unnecessary for people like you but it seems likely to leave you vulnerable to a dose of your own medicine.