Saturday, December 19, 2009

President Obama, Outdoing John Bolton, Blows Up the UN by Remote Control from Copenhagen

Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein address reporters yesterday evening on Obama's Copenhagen sellout to polluters:

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your mischaracterization of what Obama may or may not have done is reprehensible and unfounded.

I can only assume that you're extremely uninformed and chose to make assumptions based on nothing more than presumption.

This blog post reminds me of a Fox News segment, replete with the sensational but fictional headline accusation that whatever happened in the world today, (or whatever happened last week or virtually whenever), is all Obama's fault.

Climate change accord between 120 some nations across the world results in something less than the most optimistic wishes? Simple, Obama sold out.

It's Obama's fault.

And phil and Fox aren't alone in their hackery.

But, if you happen to read publications outside of the US, if you read the Financial Times and several other publications across Europe, Asia and South America, Obama's role is presented quite differently than it is by phil and Fox.

I guess that's because the world has a better perspective and a more objective view of reality than what is demonstrated in phil's headline.

That headline only serves to highlight phil's preconceived notions and presumptuous but unfounded suppositions.

I'd expect better, but it's simply not the first time phil has demonstrated such flights of his ill-conceived fancy.

If you want to understand what did and what didn't happen at Copenhagen, please look beyond the knee jerk suppositions and unfounded accusations.

It's too important an issue to treat is as lightly and as incomprehensibly as the headline demonstrates.

What was accomplished in Copenhagen was positive and will have large positive effects into the future.

What wasn't accomplished can't be laid off on Obama as if Copenhagen was his show and the whole shebang rested on his shoulders.

If you care to educate yourself about what transpired in Copenhagen, there are much better sources than the hackery this post represents.

freeper

Anonymous said...

As much as I appreciate some of your work phil,

this isn't an instance where any appreciation is deserved.

Your readers deserve better and the issue itself and the roles of all involved deserves better representation.

freeper

Kevin said...

Thanks for posting this. McKibben's calling it a "reverse Nixon-in-China moment" captured the irony nicely. But Nixon didn't go to China because he, or the conservatives, "saw the light" and decided it was time to stop the silly pretense that Taiwan's Kuomintang was the legitimate government of China and we wouldn't recognize a Communist dictatorship. He went because he saw it as in the interest of the US at a time when we were looking for an "honorable" way out of Vietnam, among other things. The realities of power -- who can do what for, and to, whom -- trumped ideology, and I suspect that is what is going on here.

I don't know enough to say, but at the moment, internationally it looks like we need Russia and China more than they need us, and domestically, if Obama is having such difficulty with health care reform, something most Americans want, how would he be able to get the Senate to approve a treaty with teeth in it? The American people are still uninformed and apathetic, the right wing can stir up terror of foreign domination, and I think we know what industry wants. A hollow but shiny PR moment may have been the best that Obama could pull off.

My parents were Stevenson Democrats, I trick-or-treated for UNICEF, but it has been a long time since I respected the UN. It is a fatally flawed organization whose time has gone. International cooperation that is in everyone's interest will happen without a bloated pretentious umbrella organization. Perhaps there is value in keeping the UN as a source of neutral mediators and peace-keeping troops to police truces that both sides want but don't trust the other to keep, but the notion of international government is not viable and probably never will be.

Anonymous said...

other than calling Obama's actions a 'shiny PR moment', kevin, what exactly is it that supports your contention?

You provide no evidence to support your suppositions, in fact, you admit you don't know enough to make a statement that can be considered to be informed.

You may have trick or treated for UNICEF, but there's little evidence that your political acumen has progressed beyond what you might have possessed at that time.

Unless or until someone can provide some evidence to support the facetious contention that Obama is responsible for whatever failure someone conceives, more layers of hackery aren't sufficient replacement for factual reality.

I would think if you preface your statements by acknowledging you don't know enough about what you're talking about to really know, you stop short of trying to conclude your hackery with such pretentious unsupported pretense.

But then again, that's all some have, and they don't hesitate to add to the noise ratio.

Does anyone have any evidence that Obama directly caused any imagined failure at Copenhagen?

There hasn't been any shown here yet.

freeper

Kevin said...

Freeper,

I accept your criticism, that I didn't know enough to be commenting. Beyond telling me to shut up, do you have anything to say? If ignorance adds little, rudeness adds less.

Anonymous said...

do I have anything to say?

I believe it's evident that I already said it, and it seems you comprehended it just fine.

You just chose not to respond to any of the content except what might have made you insecure.

My comments still stand, no one, including you, has provided any substance to support the headline or the inference that Obama was responsible for whatever imaginative failure someone may wish to assign him.

And don't be wheedling on about civility when you haven't the civility to provide evidence to back up your own unimaginative and unfounded inferences.