The President Sets A Precedent
Posted by Michelle Moquin on August 21st, 2014
Good morning!
Adam: Welcome back. So nice to open my blog and see comments from you. Who could forget you?! I’m looking forward to hearing what you all have been up to and what you have learned. AH: Welcome back to you and Bita too. I always get excited knowing the three of you are around. I feel like you three are the celebrities on the blog – not sure why I feel that way, but I guess it’s because your travels are always so adventurous and we get to be privy to things that happen on our planet that we might not ever know if it weren’t for your time traveling and giving us the inside scoop. I HOPE you’ll all stay for awhile. It means so much to me and my readers.
This write was in my queue, so since you broached the topic, Adam, I thought it was the ideal time to post it. I think it is awesome and unlike the media, everyone here knows how much I love to tout our president and give him credit where credit is due.
From Think Progress:
EXCLUSIVE: Obama Will Personally Chair U.N. Security Council Meeting
President Barack Obama chairs a meeting of the United Nations Security Council in 2009
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK
President Barack Obama will preside over a meeting of the United Nations Security Council during his attendance of the U.N.’s annual General Assembly, ThinkProgress has learned, marking the second time in history that a U.S. president has done so.
The last time the U.S. was president of the Council during the weeklong opening of the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) was 2009, the year that President Obama assumed office. Then the meeting was convened to discuss the spread of nuclear weapons and material, and Obama’s presence ensured it was a widely attended event that lead to the unanimous passage of a resolution meant to strengthen safeguards against nuclear proliferation. According a draft schedule for this year’s UNGA week, seen by ThinkProgress, the current plan is to have President Obama take advantage of the Council’s presidency once again, this time to discuss counterterrorism.
Currently the plan is to have a U.S.-drafted resolution to address the phenomenon negotiated and ready to pass during the September meeting. During the last time Obama chaired the Council, the leaders of Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China — the other permanent members of the Council — were all in attendance. This time, the audience is not guaranteed to be quite so lustrous. France’s mission to the United Nations told ThinkProgress that French president Francois Hollande should be attending the General Assembly but would not confirm whether he would be attending the Security Council meeting. A spokesperson for the British mission said that plans were still being finalized for that week, but “will take into account” President Obama chairing the meeting. Neither China nor Russia’s missions responded to queries from ThinkProgress, but Russian president Vladimir Putin has proven himself an infrequent attendee at the annual General Assembly meeting.
Every month, the presidency of the Security Council rotates between the 15 member body, giving them the chance to set the agenda and lead meetings of the body. September, the next time that the U.S. is slated to hold the gavel, is also when the General Assembly — which comprises all 193 member-states — holds its annual meeting at U.N. headquarters. World leaders and other high-level dignitaries flock to New York and diplomatic meetings on the sidelines often produce results, including last year when the U.S. and Iran spoke direct at the highest level since 1979. Obama’s presence will make the upcoming meeting the first Head of Government-level Security Council session since 2009.
“When President Obama first chaired a Security Council meeting, the question of the US relationship with the organization was much more salient than it is today,” David Bosco, an assistant professor at American University and author of a book on the workings of the Security Council, told ThinkProgress in an email. “Obama’s first time in the chair was an opportunity to very visibly distance himself from what was perceived–not always fairly–as the hostility of the Bush administration to the UN’s work. The US/UN relationship has now become much less fraught. There are plenty of frictions, but there’s no sense of hostility from Washington.”
Richard Gowan, associate director at New York University’s Center for International Cooperation, agreed that Obama’s first time at the U.N. was a success, noting that the president “didn’t just chair the Security Council but gave an expansive speech to the General Assembly about common interests and convened a special meeting with other leaders on UN peacekeeping.” While this drew a line under the Bush years, Gowan continued in his email to ThinkProgress, “this was a prelude to repeated multilateral setbacks like the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit mess, the Syrian horror story and the South Sudan debacle.”
“Counterterrorism is a smart topic for a top-level Security Council debate,” Gowan wrote, pointing to the fact that such disparate Council members as France, China, Nigeria, and Russia would all want to discuss the issue because of their relationship with Mali, worries over the Xinjiang provence, the rise of Boko Haram, and unrest in the Caucasus respectively.
“But there may be blowback too,” Gowan cautioned. “This being the UN, someone inside or outside the Council will equate Israel’s behaviour in Gaza with terrorism. The Russians may well talk about the ‘terrorists’ that overthrew the government in Kiev, while Western governments could push back and accuse Russia of supporting terrorists in eastern Ukraine. Perhaps everyone will be on good behaviour and show President Obama due deference, but at a minimum there will be a lot of barely-suppressed political tensions around the Security Council table.”
*G*O*B*A*M*A!*
Thoughts? You know what to do…blog me.
Peace Baby.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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August 21st, 2014 at 1:42 pm
Hi Michelle, you should check your e-mails spam folder for an American Greetings E-card as I have not been notified that it has been opened yet;)
Zen Lill, you should do the same (under your questions e-address;)
Luv Al
August 21st, 2014 at 6:34 pm
Thank you Michelle for feeling the way you do. I wish I could allow Bita to view your blog, but alas that would as AH says “rock the boat.”
I personally like your Western days, but AH has been fixated on discovering what his fellow “Founding Fathers” were up to while pretending to be for “liberty and justice for all.”
I will be delighted to share with you and your blog the discoveries we make along the way. It is interesting that nothing has come out about the behind the scenes plotting Churchill was making with Stalin to control the OTW countries on the planet. He was willing to sacrifice the US in his quest to keep the British pound the currency of the world.
Starlin played him as AH said like a harp. He never respected an Island nation that Russia proper could piss into oblivion. He feared getting on the bad side of America especially while they had so many armed forces in his backyard. Therefore he leaked the backstabbing plans of Churchill to some key americans.
Adam.
August 21st, 2014 at 6:47 pm
So many of my fellow whites are so jealous of Obama doing first as POTUS, they visibly shake when I mention something he does. I used to do it because when my father died he was a big donor to the republican party. I mean in the millions. Yet hardly any of those hand-out bastard showed up for the funeral or the Wake.
My mother was heart-broken over their betrayal. I decided then and there I would be a democrat. At first it was so much wonderful revenge countering their “conservatism” with the things I had learned by studying democrats and their positions on issues.
But after a while I discovered they were right. My republican friends at best are hypocrites and at their worst just common racist trying to hide it in public but relishing it in private.
They hate the fact that a black man got in and despise the fact that he has done so very much better than any president before him. It just sickens them. I love the shit out of it.
The beautiful and easy thing is I don’t have to make shit up. I just bring up what the man has done and they cringe with anger and regret.
R.I.P. Dad, I got your back.
August 21st, 2014 at 6:49 pm
Dumbo ears is perfect for the job. He will sit around and smile his tooth grin, say a few platitudes like Rodney King said, “can;t we all just get along?” and leave with nothing accomplished
August 21st, 2014 at 7:00 pm
Al’a'mode … so sorry I hardly check that email bc I thought I’d forwarded it to my other 2, I was wrong … so first, thanks for alerting me to go there, and the when i got there I saw 3 e’s from you, but no e card : / ooh…no…bc…now I want one : )
Thanks, secondly, bc while I was there I decided I should probably look through at least 500 of the thousands of emails there (mostly adverts) and found an email from Howie dated June 23.
I am so sorry, Howie, and thank you and I did respond at length, I won’t get into it here, please read it and I hope you have some sage words for me, you always do …
Luv, Zen Lill
August 21st, 2014 at 7:07 pm
Jealousy is a bastard, huh Fred?
August 21st, 2014 at 7:32 pm
Irene, lol … I thought that when I read ‘Fred’s’ comment bc when you have to resort to bagging on the physicality of an overall attractive man to make your point, you’re so jealie your green – how’s that for a skin color, Fred?
August 21st, 2014 at 7:47 pm
Obama can do more on his vacation than most of the other 43 could do full time. He isn’t changing his schedule because others think he should.
August 21st, 2014 at 7:50 pm
There is nothing the right wing won’t do or say to make this president look bad. Now when we need to show a united front, the creeps are busy attempting to tear the president apart.
The Nation doesn’t matter to a bunch of bought and paid for republicans. They stay in office by race baiting their constituents. Constituents who don’t care about the nation if a black man remains at the head.
Sick
August 21st, 2014 at 7:54 pm
President Obama is going to be the Chair of one of the UN’s security council. Which brings me to the U.S Constitution. Article 1 Section 9 Subsection 8.
‘ No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state’.
August 21st, 2014 at 8:00 pm
Bart#10, he UN council is not a foreign state – all it does is make recommendations – it is virtually powerless and mainly suugestive. You obviously can read a constitution but you cant make any sense of applying it in practice.
Its good to see you are receiving viral emails and copy/pasting them to show you are smarter than everyone else even though it is false. Ever heard of snopes.com? Do yourself a favor, anytime your friends email you something political, go to http://www.snopes.com and check the facts. There is a 98% chance the email will be wrong and you will save yourself from embarrassment like this.
August 21st, 2014 at 8:01 pm
Nothing good is going to come out of this….
August 21st, 2014 at 8:02 pm
You’d think the nigger would be glad to stay in a White man’s house. One would not know that since the nigger is always away.
August 21st, 2014 at 8:04 pm
Eric#11, if you put your trust is snopes.com you’re not too smart either!
August 21st, 2014 at 8:16 pm
Claudier#14, why dont you instead prove my point wrong rather than try to discredit the source? you look foolish when you do this.
August 21st, 2014 at 8:17 pm
Eric#11, Better yet, don’t rely on snopes. Do your OWN research and go to the sources yourself. Why rely on any partisan (be left or right) site who has not always been accurate when you can just do the research on your own?
August 21st, 2014 at 8:19 pm
Don#16, Snopes is a non-partisan fact checker. It is common among partisan idealists to discredit the source when they find it difficult to discredit the point.
You and the rest of the right only hate Snopes because it discredits 98% of what republicans share through viral emails as “facts.” Can you prove that 98% of Snopes is false? comeback to the big boy table when you do.
August 21st, 2014 at 9:01 pm
ZL: Look again, I am sort of sure you will find it this time.
Al a’mode
August 21st, 2014 at 9:15 pm
Al: Got it, bro, that was awesome and made my day, thank you! -ZL
August 22nd, 2014 at 8:24 am
Michelle: Just goes to show how the GOP has it out for Obama. Never before in history has a US president chaired an U.N. General Assembly. Obama has done it twice.
And do you think that the corporate, GOP controlled media would make any mention of this. I follow the news some and I have never heard a word about this precedent.
I would guess that one is invited to chair this gathering. Seems like Obama is the first US President that was trusted, had something of value to contribute, and did not try and charge an arm and a leg for his time, and appeared for free.
This is a very newsworthy achievement and should have made the front page, but no, it was suppressed. I haven’t heard a word about this anywhere except on MM’s blog. You really do have something special going on here, unique and like no other.
I’ll bet you are thinking that I am just blowing smoke up your….but that is besides the point, I mean every word I said. You got a thang going on here. Believe that.
Al