Chomsky at UNITED NATIONS

but nobody else is there to listen....

Chomsky says RTP (Responsibility to Protect) won.t be possible as long as imperial nations maintain control

Posted by Tala Dowlatshahi on July 24, 2009

World leaders gathered at the Untied Nations this week to attend a General Assembly organized thematic debate on RTP (Responsibility to Protect or .R2P.). R2p is a new human rights norm set up to address the international community.s failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. RTP relates to a state.s responsibilities towards its population and to the international community.s responsibility in case a state fails to follow up on investigating and prosecuting a crime.

The debate, held at the Trusteeship Council this week in New York, was a charged environment from the introduction. Many countries do no agree with the current veto powers of the Security Council and others voiced concern on how an agreed framework could be provided to set up a legal and ethical basis for humanitarian intervention. Direct failures by the United Nations, in a state that was unwilling or unable to prevent or stop genocide, massive killings and other massive human rights violations like Sudan, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo were highlighted.

Supporters of R2P want the establishment of a normative basis for humanitarian intervention while opponents say justifying external breaches of state sovereignty encourages foreign aggression by stronger nations. Some dignitaries accused other participants of .living in a paper world, while they lived in a real world..

The UN Charter was underscored as the universal standard by which nations should be operating.

Professor Noam Chomsky, said he hoped the UN well but .every use of force, has been justified, even from the worst monsters..

Participants included Noam Chomsky, Gareth Evans former Foreign Minister of Australia, and Professors Jean Bricmont of Belgium and Ngugi wa Thiong.o from Kenya.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, issued a report early this year on implementing RTP.

A link to the report: http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/publications/core-rtop-documents

talkradionews.com/2009/07/chomsky-says-rtp-responsibility-to-protect-wont-be-possible-as-long-as-imperial-nations-maintain-control/

===================================

Chomsky: Sri Lanka, a Rwanda-like major atrocity the West didn't care

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 July 2009, 10:40 GMT]

Prof Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT, said Thursday during a United Nations forum on Responsibility to Protect (R2P), that what happened in Sri Lanka was a major Rwanda-like atrocity, in a different scale, where the West didn't care. "There was plenty of early warning. This [conflict] has been going on for years and decades. Plenty of things could have been done [to prevent it]. But there was not enough interest." Chomsky was responding to a question that referred to Jan Egeland, former head of UN's Humanitarian Affairs' earlier statement that R2P was a failure in Sri Lanka, where Inner City Press (ICP) noted that nearly 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed.

On ICP Matthew Lee's reference to the UN's doctrine of R2P which was signed by 191 states in 2005 and question if there was a consensus in UN about this doctrine, Chomsky described the power interests at play at the UN, and how Western Governments' policies of structural adjustments in other countries are tearing those societies apart.

Lee also noted that Robert Evans, former head of the International Crisis Group (ICG) had earlier said that UN had responded to Sri Lanka in the R2P sense.

Chomsky took issue with the optimistic characterization by Evan's of the activities of the UN with regards to R2P.

R2P is generally noted as Kofi Annan's greatest achievement in "humanitarian intervention," to bring governments and leaders massacring their own people to account.

Noam Chomsky, is known as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, a libertarian socialist intellectual, and is also described as a "hero of Homeric proportions," belonging solidly in the pantheon of US's finest minds.

======================================

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 2:05 AM MDT

Editor:

Re: Letter by Robert A. Webb, July 15, Star-Tribune ("Consequences of complacency"). At last a letter that makes sense! Good job!

Comfortable people seldom get concerned about anything unless they begin to get "uncomfortable." Therefore, boiling the lobster is done incrementally and before he is aware he's "in hot water," it's already too late!

Genghis Khan knew and used his knowledge of human nature to create the largest empire that ever existed in human history. He attacked each kingdom and city-state knowing that he could do so unencumbered by the neighbors who were too busy (or complacent) to organize a cohesive front against the Mongols.

Read up on Noam Chomsky and Roger Baldwin (Communist and founder of the ACLU), if you haven't already, who both recognized the value of incremental steps. Chomsky even stated that "progressives" alive during his day might not ever see the changes they strive for happening, but by replicating themselves through our education systems, they would practically guarantee socialism's success in the long run.

Example: Almost everyone who experienced the "first" Great Depression of 1893 ignored the warning signs and did not take steps to stop or prepare for the "second" Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Ignoring history (experience) for an individual may have fatal results.

Ignoring history for a nation will most assuredly result in it's demise.

MIKE KUZARA, Wyarno

www.trib.com/articles/2009/07/21/editorial/letters/582c5e0ae9825e07872575f90067f609.txt

Stumble It!