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The United States withdraws from UNESCO

state.gov

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Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#311

Post by robotnixon »

hersko wrote: post #263
rc_mob wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is with you people forgetting that Trump was president in 2018 and not Obama. Why are you attributing Trumps actions to Obama. Stop it. Your comment is wholly dishonest. Obama did not want to leave UNESCO. Period. Full stop.

"The U.S. began defunding UNESCO under Obama..." what part about this is wrong?

It's misleading. Obama tried to maintain funding UNESCO:

"In 2011, the United States stopped funding Unesco because of what was then a forgotten, 15-year-old amendment mandating a complete cutoff of American financing to any United Nations agency that accepts Palestine as a full member. Various efforts by President Barack Obama to overturn the legal restriction narrowly failed in Congress, and the United States lost its vote at the organization after two years of nonpayment, in 2013."

https://web.archive.org/web/20220503183152/https://www.nytim...

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#312

Post by foobarian »

glitchc wrote: post #150
lvl155 wrote: post #40

And it’s wild to think that more than 1/3 of the devs I’ve met in my life support this admin. These are seemingly smart people. The past 10 years or so made me realize I don’t know anything about human nature or intellect. Edit: I am in no way saying conservatism is bad and liberalism is good. I have my values in both.

The online space (Reddit, HN, others) is so deeply embedded with groupthink that people have lost the ability to see other points of view or debate topics of interest. To me it's very clear why the government is leaving UNESCO (and over time the UN at large). The UN is dysfunctional and does not work. It used to be a source of soft power for the States, but hasn't been so for the better part of this century. Meanwhil…

The surface arguments for abandoning these kinds of programs (also USAID, recalling diplomats, bunch of research funding) seem straightforward: "there is a deficit, why pay all this money for ostensibly wasteful work, etc."

Where I get frustrated is when the admin turns around and massively expands the deficit by throwing cargo ships full of money at other wasteful, in my opinon, programs. That tells me the fiscal responsibility talk was just a pretense to do another kind of money grab and "own the libs" at the same time. And at the end of the day the argument reduces to opinions on what is wasteful and what is not.

Example: you claim UN hasn't been a source of soft power "for the better part of this century." Well, says you - I think it has done a great job. Now what?

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#314

Post by kennywinker »

crabbone wrote: post #249

This is in response to the flagged comment that, apparently, I cannot comment on. I'm not thrilled about what current US administration is doing when it comes to international NGOs. UNESCO is one example. However, there's also another problem: various UN bodies became tools for international politics instead of doing what they were originally designed to do. It's another example of good will easily subverted by malic…

UNICEF’s mission is “providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide”

Children in gaza are being intentionally starved by israel blocking food aid. At least 15 people including one infant have been starved to death in the past 24 hours.

UNESCO’s mission is preservation of cultural heritage. Gaza and the west bank are being ethnically cleansed, and their arts and culture have already been physically destroyed by US bombs dropped by israel. This will destroy cultural groups, thus leaving little to preserve.

The world is political. You give someone a goal of preserving culture, or protecting children, and all of a sudden they’ll start speaking out when you destroy culture and starve children.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#315

Post by paulvnickerson »

hersko wrote: post #268
it_citizen wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is one of the most 10 upvoted topics on the main page. People seem to want to see it here and comment about it. Personally I am happy to see it discussed here. I have seen interesting comments tempering and contextualizing the headline that I appreciate. There are still a vast majority of articles on other topics. Those ones are easy to ignore if they bother someone.

Yes, politics always drives clicks. That is not OPs point though.

Agreed. If I want to see doom and gloom announcements about the current administration I'll go read Huffington Post or NY Times, thank you very much.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#317

Post by dartharva »

Angostura wrote: post #225
glitchc wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The online space (Reddit, HN, others) is so deeply embedded with groupthink that people have lost the ability to see other points of view or debate topics of interest. To me it's very clear why the government is leaving UNESCO (and over time the UN at large). The UN is dysfunctional and does not work. It used to be a source of soft power for the States, but hasn't been so for the better part of this century. Meanwhil…

You say “the UN doesn’t work” apparently because “working” means it being a source of soft power for the US. It had several remits, but its most important is probably the one to prevent a world war. It’s designed specifically as a talking shop to help countries find other ways of resolving disputes than kill people - and promote international understanding . It’s far from perfect, but in general it does a pretty good…

> It’s far from perfect, but in general it does a pretty good job.

The current state of the world would definitely beg to differ

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#318

Post by [deleted] »

lvl155 wrote: post #40

And it’s wild to think that more than 1/3 of the devs I’ve met in my life support this admin. These are seemingly smart people. The past 10 years or so made me realize I don’t know anything about human nature or intellect. Edit: I am in no way saying conservatism is bad and liberalism is good. I have my values in both.

[deleted]
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