
US Expected to Withdraw from UN Human Rights Council - petethomas
http://thehill.com/policy/international/392418-us-expected-to-withdraw-from-un-human-rights-council-report
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guelo
I don't understand United State's extreme support for Israel. No one ever
explains it. You just get either accused of antisemitim or that it's because
of AIPAC money. But there has to be more to it than that, there is strong
bipartisan support for Israel. Why is it so much in our interest? I'd love to
get the real realpolitk explanation.

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JumpCrisscross
Supporters of Israel, principally Israeli Americans and Evangelists, are
extremely well organised. They donate. They go to meetings. They call their
Congresspersons. And when they vote, they treat this as a single issue.

More broadly, Israel is an advanced democracy and technological jewel with
which we have a close economic, military and political alliance. You stick
with your friends through the bad times.

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guelo
Some friends, other friends like Canada can apparently be beat up no problem.

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eli_gottlieb
Yeah, until the very moment Canada elects a right-populist/neo-fascist
government. We all know what Trump and his administration are up to.

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matt4077
UNHRC happens to be the one entity whose bad reputation is somewhat justified,
although I guess the US President just made it his point that talking is
always better than not talking?

There are other UN institutions far more useful, and also far more liable to
be harmed by a US boycott. UNHCR would be first on that lis. They are
currently caring for millions of refugees, helping both them as well as the
western countries that would be overrun by asylum-seekers without these
efforts. They do so on a shoestring budget (something like $2 per person/day).

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matthewmacleod
So at a high level, what’s the path to recovery for Western liberal democracy?

There seem to be many long-term structural problems that we aren’t really
dealing with. Climate change, unfair accumulation of wealth, the change in
labour and employment requirements; decaying infrastructure, corruption,
increasingly adversarial and fact-free politics, to name a few.

I would like the world to be a better place for everyone. I always thought
that a balanced mix of well-regulated markets and targeted state involvement,
backed by a transparent and accessible democracy, would be the way to achieve
that. But it seems to have faltered, at least in the Anglosphere.

Is it just done for? Does the future look totally different? It seems like
such an intractable problem that I have no idea where to start.

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uxp100
What's the connection you see between this article and this question?

Leaving the UNHRC (not to be confused with the UNHCR as someone noted below,
they're not a bad choice AFAIK if you are looking for a charitable
organizations helping refugees to give to) doesn't seem to be a sign of the
decline of western liberal democracy.

The council has issued more condemnations of Israel than it has issued
condemnations of every other country in the world combined. Leaving is about
rejecting that set of priorities. Not to say that those priorities are wrong,
but obviously the US leadership does not agree that Israel should be the
subject of so much of the councils time.

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kpil
Isn't the UN HRC run by a prince from Saudi Arabia and a number of other
representatives from undemocratic and repressive states?

