Hopefully we are at the beginning of a change, but I doubt this will come only from the UN.
The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba. Every year the outcome of the vote, which has always resulted in a great majority demanding the immediate end of the embargo, has been ignored by the US, resulting in millions of Cubans facing extreme economic consequences since many decades. The last time every country except Israel and US voted for ending the embargo (I might be wrong, maybe a single African state abstained).
In all of this, the only seed of joy I see, was seeing the Cubans a couple of years ago, after decades and decades of seeing their economy strangled by the most powerful country on Earth, roll out their own Covid vaccine just at the same time of those of big Pharma - a vaccine that resulted excellent, effective, and cheap. Hats off for the Cubans. Hope to see some other seed like this also in the Palestinians.
What people fail to understand about dynamics between countries, is ultimately there is no supreme court or arbiter of truth. The UN doesn't have authority over any powerful country (or non powerful country for that matter).
People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want, but there isn't. When it comes to geopolitics, the biggest and most powerful sets the rules and lives by them (or not). The USA has zero motivation to do something the UN wants it to do, if it doesn't itself want to do it. No one is going to hold it to account.
Ultimately - whoever controls the violence can set the rules. For the last 80 years that's been the US. Maybe that is changing, but not quite yet.
The UN isn't an international democratic institution. For the last 20-30 years it's been a powerless theatre. And it didn't have much power before then either. Because ultimately, whoever has the most nukes and the biggest army rules the world.
> People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want,
Can you blame them? The same countries facilitating this genocide have been telling everyone they uphold principles of human rights and democracy, and a "rules based international order*, and that they oppose genocide. Only now are enough horrors breaking through in such a surreal way that people are forced to notice the contradictions.
Its important to note that most of those "irrelevant" countries are only irrelevant because they're perpetually under the thumb of world powers. Hence why they petition the UN. And, hence why empires and somewhat-formally colonial nations ignore them.
Ultimately, a lot of the wealth of the West comes from core countries siphoning wealth from the periphery and propping up psueodo governments to place their thumbs on the scale of world politics. Exhibit A: Israel.
Empires are not exclusive to the West, and those also ignore the UN. For many of the countries under their thumbs, the West has at least sometimes been acting in their defense.
> The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
It's not been ignored the purpose of the UN is for largely irrelevant countries to petition the world powers to maybe consider doing something. The UN has been so successful because it has no real power over players like the USA.
> The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba.
Ok? I mean the purpose of the UN is for people to suggest stuff to players like the USA not for the USA to actually do what the UN votes for.
It's weird to claim that one country should be forced to trade with another country. International trade is voluntary on both sides. The US isn't responsible for keeping any other country's economy healthy. It's simply not our problem, and Cuban economic problems are a consequence of their own corruption and dogmatic incompetence. Should the US also be forced to trade with, let's say, North Korea?
The UN serves as a valuable diplomatic forum but let's not pretend that is does have or should have any real power or authority.
The US sanctions countries and/or foreign businesses that trade with Cuba, the embargo isn't simply between the US and Cuba. Because the US has effective control of most of the world's financial system, it is able to enforce this.
Yes, of course. No one is required to use the US financial system. Other countries are welcome to build their own. Why should we allow ours to be used to prop up a brutal and illegitimate communist dictatorship?
One hopeful observation is that I actually have seen coverage of the genocide in a local newspaper this time. N=1 of course (and I'm not sure what other local newspapers have been like), but that's more than before.
The most hilarious thing to me in this story is the PR guy who replied "most of the things sold in the US these days require warnings about causing cancer". And everybody seems fine with that. LOL
It's ridiculous, but maybe not the way you think; Prop 65 in California classified a lot of things as requiring notification, including things like "Wood Dust." so now every apartment building has a sign in the hallway that says "this building may contain chemicals" and everyone ignores it. The law has lead to people being less informed rather than more informed.
I despise Prop 65 warnings in principle, but the damnable thing about them is they may actually have some effectiveness, if this study is to be believed ( https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11651356/ ): "Levels of certain chemicals listed under California’s law have declined in biosamples from people across the nation. ... Although the law did not require changes to product formulations or processes, interviews with representatives of affected companies have indicated that many businesses did alter formulations to avoid having to post warnings or manufacture special products just for California."
The study has a lot of limitations, and NHANES is not really designed for this kind of analysis, but it sounds like the warnings do well as a cudgel to beat manufacturers with even if regular individuals ignore them. Even more interesting is the knock-on effects Prop 65 has on people outside of California. Overall it seems like an argument to keep them around, sort of.
I remember when I first bought a knife either made in USA or just targeted at that market (not sure: I mean, I don't think it was the first thing I bought made by an USA company, but I've never seen that warning before), and found that warning inside the package I was quite puzzled, like WTF, I though I was buying a good knife, not some recycled hazardous waste-material or whatever this is. Then, of course, I googled and found out that they stick it on pretty much anything, so that plastic handle is probably just like any plastic handle of any knife I held before. But still it was very weird.
They're as silly as they sound. Growing up, there was a sign when you enter the school's bus storage and maintenance area. More recently, I've seen them at Starbucks (for coffee), in the vinegar section of the grocery store, and on untreated lumber.
This isn't California being California, but it is well-meaning legislation getting out-of-hand because of enforcement mechanisms. It's like website cookie warnings. It was a nice idea, but it lead to a silly place.
Replying because I remembered coffee too, and had to look it up. ‘Good’(?) news is that it was decided in 2019(!) that coffee does not require a Prop 65 warning.
Whenever I see these warnings in the wild, I (jokingly... mostly) think to myself: "well I don't have to worry about getting cancer from this because I live in Texas now, not California"
Prop 65 is frequently joked about but at the time it was a resounding success. The drawback is that any item being sold in California that doesn't pay for the extensive testing (to confirm it doesn't contain any of the thousand chemicals on the list from 1985), ends up carrying the label that the item might cause cancer. If Wikipedia is too dry for you, there's a podcast that explains the history and facts well https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/warning-this-podcast-...
I caught that too, though I believe the California warnings are generally of the form "if you can't prove nothing in there causes cancer, then it might cause cancer."
This is the best guide to improve anti-social behaviour in remote workers and disrupt teams. Just refuse to answer when people text you "Hello".
Oh, come on...
Am I loosing time waiting for your "hello" back? Well, guess what: maybe I took it into consideration the fact that you're busy, and that I might be waiting for hours, but not answering at all only makes you a jerk.
This is far from politely refusing "quick calls" when busy. And no: you can't be always busy: if you want to keep telling yourself you're working in a team you need to allocate a reasonable amount of time to social interactions.
Do you really expect me to send you a calendar event invitation to have a quick call with you once in a month? To update you about something that might even interest you? Maybe it's not going to be communicated in the most efficient way possible, as would be with an email, but certainly it will be done in a way that would keep us human beings, not mentioning the fact that it would also improve team work.
If you do, please do not expect me to sit next to you if we happen to meet in person, and be happy and friendly.
The best way to interact with people who feel this way is to not play the games. Eventually the isolated individual will be managed out or adapt to a more sensible posture. Best to work around them until then.
Nah, we just use our secret courts to issue secret orders to hand over data or just have the intelligence agencies backdoor everything without bothering to make a big fuss over it.
The Afghanistan withdrawal was what is known as a "foreshadowing." Zelensky should do his best not to rely on anything the United States does or promises. The time things could have ended well was over about a week ago. The only question now is how hard we hit rock bottom.
Man: if you weren't able to design a big, centralized system that works, don't repeat the same propaganda you were fed with for years: that is, that central state-level planification don't work. Look at China, and tell them their system is going to crash. They will laught at you, and you deserve it.
Stop repeating this propaganda and start questioning your assumptions. You are saying that we need some kind of overall hierarchy and regulamentation. This is what the world is trying to do since decades with international organizations. Like the UNO, who is asking since almost thirty years to stop the embargo against Cuba.
Start complying with the international rules and the world's democratic institutions, then come back giving us a lesson about what we need to do.
The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba. Every year the outcome of the vote, which has always resulted in a great majority demanding the immediate end of the embargo, has been ignored by the US, resulting in millions of Cubans facing extreme economic consequences since many decades. The last time every country except Israel and US voted for ending the embargo (I might be wrong, maybe a single African state abstained).
In all of this, the only seed of joy I see, was seeing the Cubans a couple of years ago, after decades and decades of seeing their economy strangled by the most powerful country on Earth, roll out their own Covid vaccine just at the same time of those of big Pharma - a vaccine that resulted excellent, effective, and cheap. Hats off for the Cubans. Hope to see some other seed like this also in the Palestinians.