Quote from: Muhammed Zakir on April 09, 2015, 02:01:51 PM

Quote from: J. J. Phillips on April 09, 2015, 12:23:51 PM

True-or-false statement:

(USUN) The US indirectly controls the UN.

Fact: The US has veto power on the security council, as do 4 other nations. The US "controls" the UN in the same sense as Russia, Britain, France and China. The US has no veto power over the general assembly and they regularly vote for resolutions against Israel. So, the US does not control the UN.
Status: (USUN) is false.

It doesn't matter anyway, since the UN has very little power (fortunately).

Nope. US has a lot of money. If US goes from UN, it will be hard for UN to stand in financial things.

Very good! Now, does everyone see what happened here? There was a clear statement that can be true or false: (USUN) The US indirectly controls the UN.

I presented two other true-or-false style statements as evidence that the US does not control the UN. (See my response above.) While MZ has ignored my two statements (naughty!), he has advanced the argument by offering different statements as evidence that the US actually does control the UN. The two statements are:

(US$UN) The US gives a lot of money to the UN.
(UNUS$) The UN wants the US to keep giving the UN a lot of money.

(First of all, please notice that instead of ignoring his statements, I am responding to them. That's what happens in a discussion. I thought I should point that out since it seems to be unfamiliar territory for many of you. Or if that's too controversial we could call it disputed territory.)

Now, it's not clear just from the statements (US$UN) and (UNUS$) what this has to do with Israel, but let me make the following statement that I suspect is supposed to be implied by the two explicit statements (US$UN) and (UNUS$).

(UNUS$ISR) The UN makes some of its decisions with respect to the Middle East conflict so that the US continues to give the UN a lot of money.

Is that what you're asserting MZ? I'll assume for now it is.

Now, I haven't checked (US$UN) in a long time, but I read some years ago that in fact the US is one of the major financial backers of the UN. (It's one of the reason many Americans on the right complain about the UN.) Without objection then:

(US$UN) Status: True.

It's also clear enough to me that the UN would be very unhappy if the US stopped giving it money (and especially if New York made it pay for the real estate it uses!). So let's also concede this:

(UNUS$) Status: True.

However, neither of these necessarily imply (UNUS$ISR). Consider the following two statements:

(UNGA) The UN general assembly has passed many resolutions against Israel.
(UNHMR) The UN human rights council is notoriously anti-Israel.

This is counterevidence against (UNUS$ISR). In other words, I present those two statements as evidence that (UNUS$ISR) is false. If the UN were making decisions based on US dollars, why would the general assembly and the human rights council behave this way? Aren't they afraid of losing those precious dollars?

Evidence of (UNUS$ISR) being true would be of the following form:

There is an action A which is relevant to the conflict. The US is threatening to withdraw funding for action A if the UN takes action A.

Simply say what action A is. I've never heard of the US government seriously threatening to withdraw funding from the UN (as much as many American taxpayers would love it), but I'll be open-minded that it could be quietly happening behind the scenes.

What is this action A the UN is unwilling to take out of fear of losing US dollars?

In case it isn't clear, I'm asking for what the action A is. So in your respond you should say an action A. It should be such that the UN could take it but is unwilling to do so because of US dollars. It should also be related to the conflict under discussion. And it should be an action. It might help if you start the sentence with "The action A I have in mind is..."

The only kinds of actions I can imagine (though I see no connection to US$) is the vetoing of Security Council resolutions. Here's a Wikipedia page about the related Negroponte Doctrine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negroponte_doctrine

However, the passing or veto of a UN Security Council seems like an irrelevant action. It doesn't change anything about the facts of the conflict. Are you wanting the UN to send some troops to fight Israel?

As an aside since you brought it up: I'm not anti-German (not that I've met many Germans). I'm anti-Nazi. Nazis come from many nationalities, as this thread makes clear. The German people in the 1930s and 1940s were not generally innocent though. It's a bit of an oversimplification that the Germans "voted for" the Nazis, but it's largely true. To relate it to the topic, I'll note that Hamas is by many measures worse than the Nazis and the Palestinians voted for them more clearly than the Germans voted for the Nazis. In a Palestinian election adopting the nickname "Hitler" helps you win an election. (I didn't make that up. It happened.)