Vetoes at U.N. Security Council

The Chinese and Russian's double vetoes at U.N.'s Security Councilover Syria resolution have rightly generated great indignation and anger around the world and China was forced to put forth some sort of defense over its action.

It claims, through the Chinese Communist Party's main newspapers - the People's Daily and the Global Times.  They claimed that China (The People's Republic of China) had always been very careful over exercising veto right and had so far only vetoed eight times (excluding the one vetoed in 1955 by the Republic of China over new U.N. membership for Mongolia).

Above chart showed the eight vetoes it exercised (from Global Times).  The People's Daily gave a detailed account of those eight vetoes.

The People's Daily openly admitted that their vetoes in 1997 over Central- and South-Americas peace efforts, 1999 over Macedonia's situation, 2008 over Africa's peace and safety (Zimbabwe) were due to those countries/regions' diplomatic relationships they maintained with Taiwan (or The Republic of China) and the vetoes were the paybacks.

In 2007, China vetoed effort to solve Burma's situation and in 2011 and 2012, China twice vetoed efforts to stop killing of civilians in Syria.


Source: Guardian.co.uk

It is obvious that China has behaved very selfishly time to time, either to revenge/blackmail over its own interest, of to protect their geopolitical friends or allies.

However, condemning such behavior should not stop with China and Russia.

The United States of America has vetoed many times, particularly over resolutions to censure its chief ally in the Mideast - Israel.  Over and over, it made excuses not to pass resolution to demand Israel to stop building illegal settlement housing in the disputed land. 

All members entrusted with the supreme power to veto at the U.N.'s Security Council ought to behave absolutely responsibly.  Failing that, each such irresponsible vetoes ought to be condemned.

Learning From China

The so called "war on terror" is entering a new stark chapter.

According to San Francisco Chronicle's report,

President Barack Obama steered the nation's war machine into uncharted territory Friday when a U.S. drone attacked a convoy in Yemen and killed two American citizens who had become central figures in al-Qaida.

It was believed to be the first instance in which a U.S. citizen was tracked and executed based on secret intelligence and the president's say-so. And it raised major questions about the limitations of presidential power.

Anwar al-Awlaki, the target of the U.S. drone attack, was one of the best-known al-Qaida figures after Osama bin Laden. American intelligence officials had linked him to two nearly catastrophic attacks on U.S.-bound planes, an airliner on Christmas 2009 and cargo planes last year. The second American killed in the drone attack, Samir Kahn, was the editor of Inspire, a slick online magazine aimed at al-Qaida sympathizers in the West.

...

"Anwar al-Awlaki is acting as a regional commander for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in August 2010.

What if the U.S. was wrong, Gibbs was asked, what recourse does a citizen have to save himself? The CIA had misidentified and imprisoned the wrong person before. Gibbs sidestepped the question.

The U.S. has been inconsistent in how it describes al-Awlaki. The Treasury Department called him a leader of al-Qaida in Yemen. FBI Director Robert Mueller called him the leader. On Friday, Obama called him "the leader of external operations," the first time he has been described that way.

When word leaked out that al-Awlaki's name was on the list, his family rushed to court to try to stop the government from killing him, saying he had to be afforded the constitutional right to due process.

The idea of killing an American citizen provided critics with fodder for all sorts of comparisons showing the peculiarities of national security law and policy. The government could not listen to al-Awlaki's phone calls without a judge's approval, for instance, but could kill him on the president's say-so. The Obama administration opposed imprisoning terrorist suspects without due process but supported killing them without due process.

"If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state," ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said Friday.

Indeed, one of the duty of the president is to protect and ensure due process for US citizens.  If according to his own judgement, he could have a US citizen killed, without explicit legal authorization, he is on shaky ground.

In order to be more responsible, the US would do better by learning from China.

After the international outcry against Chinese's secrete detention of high profile artist Ai Weiwei and the like, China now is proposing to overhaul the criminal penal codes, to legalize the secrete arrest and detention and disappearnces.

US and China have more similarities than most people think and we can be more like China, only if we keep pace with them.

Pink and Gray Landscape © Matthew Felix Sun

End Game?

There are a lot of frets and hand wringing lately, over US's losing jobs to the rising economic powerhouses such as China and India. The crying bringing jobs back is loud and louder with mid-term election's fast approaching.

I have serious reservations on such notion. Even if it can be done, which is highly doubtful, I strongly believe that morally the US should not attempt it, rather adjust our lifestyle to face up the new world.

In the later half of the twentieth century, the US enjoyed an unprecedented economic boom, largely due to globalization which was highly beneficial to the US, on the burden of many other countries. It was a world order wearily accepted by other nations and eventually they eagerly embraced to play catching up. Now, the table turned and we found that globalization is not so benign after all and suddenly the advantageous years we enjoyed it were utterly forgotten and we demand a change of rules!

We are becoming a nation of crying babies.

World changes. Nothing will stay static forever. The US had a great run as the most economically advanced nation for a long stretch and those days are over and we must accept it as stoically as other nations endured their economical hardship.

The best President Obama and his successors could do is ministering the decline as gracefully as they can and usher us into second tier nation with least pain as possible. A second tier nation is not bad at all - there are many nations would die to be included in this rank. All feast will come to an end. End it with style, please.

Falling © Matthew Felix Sun

The Failing School or Failing Pupils

There are a lot of angst in the US - our school systems are failing and we cannot compete with China or India in the future.

I have to agree with this sentiment but I have to disagree with prevailing diagnose and it cure - more money, smaller classroom, No Child Behind, etc.

In our high school, students learned no practical skill but preparation courses for higher education. However, how many of them are built for and destined for a rigorous academic career? If not, then we are setting them up for their failure by failing to provide them a practical skills so they can learn to be a respectable technicians.

Germany sets a great example here. There, students are to choose either to head for a college training or technical skill early one (roughly our junior high school level). Therefore, they produce both scholars and high skilled workers and both camps are respected and well paid. No sense of failure is attached to those don't go to universities. Actually, their high schools are more like our colleges while their universities are more like our graduate schools.

People argued that high school educations are needed for every student to learn how to be a citizen. Those training can be provided at technical schools as well.

Recently, I read a disturbing story took place in China - a few college graduates applied for and was hired to clean manure in dry toilets. When confronted with the waste for resources, someone had the nerve of saying that the higher education enabled them to understand how to use the tools (ladles, poles and buckets) better.



With the declining of the American's economic power, I'm afraid that kind of joke will take place here too.