CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS
AND
STATUTE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICESan Francisco – 1945
CHAPTER I
PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES
Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
- To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
- To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
- To achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
- To be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
- The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
- All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfil in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
- All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
- All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
- The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.
Chapter VII of the UN Charter authorizes the Security Council to use force in the face of a threat to peace or aggression, taking “such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.” As there is currently no UN military, all such interventions are carried out by the national armed forces of member nations.
Faithfully, the United States, as the chief financial engine of the international body, has not only signed on to promote the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) scheme, but President Obama has established a federal agency to ensure that it is executed effectively.
The agency is the White House Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), which was headed by Samantha Power until she was confirmed as the U.S. ambassador to the UN.
Exercising the powers he created for himself in Executive Order 13606, President Barack Obama demonstrated his support for the R2P program when he established the Atrocities Prevention Board.
The stated goal of the APB is to first formally recognize that genocide and other mass atrocities committed by foreign powers are a “core national security interest and core moral responsibility.”
Apart from the unconstitutionality of this use of the executive order, there was something sinister in the selection of Samantha Power to spearhead the search for atrocities.
One source claims that the very existence of the APB is due to Power’s own persistence in convincing the White House that discovering atrocities should be a “core national-security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.” The statement released at the time of the signing of the executive order demonstrates Power’s remarkable power of persuasion.
Samantha Power rose to prominence in government circles as part of her campaign to promote the Responsibility to Protect scheme.
Responsibility to Protect is predicated on the proposition that sovereignty is a privilege, not a right, and that if any regime in any nation violates the UN-approved code of conduct, then the international community is morally obligated to revoke that nation’s sovereignty and assume command and control of the offending country.
United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide
○ Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Rwanda and Libya | TIME – March 2011 |
○ Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive for Libya Intervention
○ No Holds Barred Susan Rice and the Politicization of Genocide | JPost opinion – Feb. 2015 | by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Fun article by a most despicable man from New York, even tried to run for political office with funds from Myriam and Sheldon Adelson … and failed miserably. Knows all about dictators, fascism, racial tension, Rwanda and Congo …
○ Shmuley Boteach’s Jewish Histrionics
See recent article by Marcy Wheeler @Emptywheel …
Why Is CIA Avoiding the Conclusion that Putin Hacked Hillary to Retaliate for Its Covert Actions?
Remarkably, only secondary commenters (including me, in point 13 here) have suggested the most obvious explanation: The likelihood that Russia targeted the former Secretary of State for a series of covert actions, all impacting key Russian interests, that at least started while she was Secretary of State. Those are:
- Misleadingly getting the UN to sanction the Libya intervention based off the claim that it was about protecting civilians as opposed to regime change
- Generating protests targeting Putin in response to 2011 parliamentary elections
- Sponsoring “moderate rebels” to defeat Bashar al-Assad
- Removing Viktor Yanukovych to install a pro-NATO government
Importantly, the first three of these happened on Hillary’s watch, with her active involvement. And Putin blamed Hillary, personally, for the protests in 2011.
Never mind the relative merit of these covert operations. Never mind that Putin has not, yet, released any evidence to support his claim that Hillary (or CIA) supported the 2011 protests targeting him personally; there is no doubt he believes it. During the primary Hillary as much as confirmed that when her diplomats negotiated the UN vote in 2011, they had regime change in mind the whole time.
The US has acknowledged its covert operations against Assad in Congressional testimony. And hackers released a call from Victoria Nuland acting like she was in charge of deciding what post-Yanukovych Ukraine would look like.
In other words, whatever the merits and evidence behind these four events, there is no doubt Putin sees them as a threat to Russian interests and blames the US for all of them, with merit in at least some of the cases.
And yet, this most obvious motive has not been leaked to the press, creating the impression that it has never been considered by the people who carried out these covert actions.
To admit this possible motive publicly, of course, would require admitting that the US still tampers in other governments, including some that are elected (even if in elections of dubious fairness). It would also require admitting that our own government got targeted as a response to these covert interventions, which would make concerns about how novel this intervention was a lot less convincing.
If I were looking for a sovereign nation that interfered in our politics, Russia would not be my first candidate, for sure.
I suspect the rest of the world has been a lot more nervous of us than Russia at this point. Seeming to blow up countries at whim…
Yeah well, it’s verboten to look at political interference by one particular sovereign nation because it enjoys bipartisan support.
Maybe I wasn’t around here for Bibi and Mittens? Was there a similar reaction among y’all as Putin has produced?
Surely you jest. Around here Republicans are always reviled and Democrats should be praised the way parents offer non-judgmental praise for the efforts of young children and any criticism of Democrats should be wet noodles unless or until the proprietor signals otherwise.
My diary so no policing … reviewed yr last 100 comments to add “4s” :-))
That was generous of you to do. A helpful option under the circumstances, but would prefer that none of us are put in a position where we feel it’s necessary to assign retaliatory uprates to counter the abuses of the mad troll raters. Very disappointed that by his silence Martin is condoning the their irrational behavior, but he’s been loopy for a few months. Expected him to revert after the election but he seems to be doubling down. Then I saw this (second paragraph). So, it’s not the mad troll raters that have to watch their back.
I was genuinely shocked when Bob contacted me and said he had been banned. Of course, I’ve been threatened twice so maybe the hammer will come down for this post. C’est le Guerre.
hi, same opinion that you !
That’s rich after the Iraq War, bombing campaign, occupation, torture and nurturing AQI which was transformed into ISIL or the Islamic State with all the beheadings, executions and kidnappings. Death and chaos after 9/11 … blowback as a new scourge for the western world. Thanks to Putin and Russia, the end of the civil war in Syria is in sight after “turning” Erdogan into the camp of Russia and perhaps into the Shanghai bloc.
(Hope it’s okay to add something in this thread that is important and I missed in September. Apparently if I deviate a millimeter away from strict boundaries of whatever boring or belabored topic is presented on the FP, that considered thread-hijacking and merits troll ratings.)
Barton Gelman The House Intelligence Committee’s Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Snowden Report
And today Edward Snowden responds to the HPSCI report on his disclosures (Series of tweets worth reading.)
Of course the Democrats on the HPSCI signed onto that shoddy report — their party leader was engaged in an election and demonizing Snowden and Russia were major to her campaign.
“n other words, whatever the merits and evidence behind these four events, there is no doubt Putin sees them as a threat to Russian interests and blames the US for all of them, with merit in at least some of the cases.”
Put another way, the US is in the way. I do not fully understand the defense of Putin. One sees it in the bizarre arguments against NATO expansion – as if Poland did not have an obvious historical reason for being afraid of Russia. No matter, the US is behind an unreasonable expansion of NATO.
If the Russians were behind the attack on the Democrats – it was an act of War designed to undermine faith in democratic institutions.
It appears obvious that from the beginning The Clinton defenders have been determined to use the link to Russia to shift focus first from the actual content of the leaks and then to the shift focus on the mounting evidence of incompetence that characterized the campaign.
But make no mistake – I was in Philadelphia. The Wikileaks had an impact among Sanders delegates. the content of those leaks led to a riot at the Florida Caucus on the second day.
Shrugging your sholders and saying well it was all just blowback for prior US actions is absurd.
Particularly if there were links between Trump and Russia.
One can consider an embargo or crippling economic sanctions without a UN mandate as an act of war. See also Iran and the joint NSA/Unit 8200 cyberattack on Iran. The masters of hacking belongs to the US government institutions, the Five Eyes and indeed Israel.
I remember the presidency of JFK opening the cultural window towards communist nations and the Soviet Union. Refreshing and a feeling of Hope. Time is not on our hands, the world needs leadership, not building of walls or a further new Cold War footing against the people of Russia. The European Union was established to avoid a new great war, the Germans were included. It’s about time Poland and the Baltic states look West, not East and linger in old battle wounds. In the 1990s a WWII revanche war erupted across the states of Yugoslavia.