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We are the world At last, the people of the world unite to take a stand against tyranny:
Casting aside petty differences and forging new allegiances, UN ambassadors said they would ignore New York’s smoking ban, imposed five months ago and extended to the UN this week.
Now that’s what I call multilateralism!
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At last! Something the UN and I can agree on. Perhaps the UN has gone Libertarian and it will soon disolve itself. One can only hope.
Trouble is this is symbolic of the UN’s general attitude that it is above the decisions of national governments and certainly above whatever legal frameworks those countries have. It may not matter when they are ignoring smoking bans, but if we cheer on that mentality now, it becomes harder to condemn it when they declare any war fought without its approval to be illegal.
The great Hans Eysenck more or less foresaw it all in his book ‘Smoking, Health and Personality’, where he hypothesised, inter alia, that there may a precise biological basis for smoking-associated lung cancer. If so “we might hope to be able to single out the one person in twenty who constitutionally is predisposed to interact with cigarette smoking and develops cancer, thus making it possible for the other nineteen to enjoy their pleasures without having this dreadful threat hanging over them.” (page 133).
It looks like Eysenck is (more or less) right after all…
See also:
http://www.forestonline.org/output/Page134.asp
For more about Eysenck, see Chris Brand’s obituary notice online:
http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk/eysenckob.htm
Maybe, at last, this will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and Bloomberg will throw them out of NY ?
Oops!
Put that comment in the wrong place. Sorry brethern!
Only the UN could take a libertarian stand I agree with (for once) and still piss me off. Way to go UN!
Speaking of smoking bans, I heard Amerstdam has a smoking ban and now the coffee houses are all in a fit because they can’t light up. I’m shocked that the denizens of the coffee house couldn’t get organized to fight this. They are the real victims of the smoking ban.
Although I loathe the ‘smoke police’, I loathe the UN even more.
So, I say this is such a serious insult to the US that we must withdraw from the UN immediately and kick the UN out of the US!! (Any excuse for doing this is good enough for me.)
Re: Russian ambassador comment (see @ the end of the linked article) – I suspect that the owner of the UN building is the City of New York. Does anybody know for sure?
If yes, than I would suggest Mr. Lavrov goes for a smoke to the Russian Ambassy to impose his country autoritarian rule.
Uhm,
My understanding is that the UN compound is essentially like a embassy.
They can basically tell the US/NYC laws, cops and bureaucritters to go hang if they can’t be bothered to agree with them.
Fred
Not sure how diplomatic immunity applies to UN functionaries and property.
The usual doctrine would not apply to the UN building, as embassies are traditionally considered the sovereign territory of the nation that they represent, and the UN is not a nation and has no sovereign territory that the UN building could be an extension of. Maybe they have a special deal that exempts their building from state and local laws, but I don’t think that it is an embassy under the usual understanding and application of the term.
Assuming Fred is wrong (and I imagine Mr. Dean is correct), I agree strongly with Mr. Cuthbertson.
If the UN (as an institution) is going to blather on and on about the rule of (international) law and the nefcessity of following The Law for its own sake, it ought to obey those same laws when they’re present in areas the UN is present in.
Even if the smoking ban is the Stupidest Thing Ever – that’s certainly never stopped the UN before. Bastards.
Chris Josephson,
You are letting your hatred of the institution get the better of you. The sensible (if perhaps not morally right) thing to do is what the Swiss have done for many years: get out of the UN, but welcome its institutions and other people’s tax-dollars.
Guy… I’m afraid that’s not true any more…
they did so for many years, but have changed their minds (& before anyone starts on any “liberal elite” crap, it was decided by referendum… very democratic, Switzerland)
“Switzerland joined the UN on 10 September 2002.”
see this link
I’d feared as much, but thought it must have been a bad dream. Should have checked…
They’ll be joining the EU next, the poor fools.
‘sfar as i remember (& i may be wrong on this one), they had a referendum on that too, & decided not to, by a long way. There’s a world of difference between the UN & the EU; easy portrayals of supra-national beaurocrats who want to control everything don’t fit very well.