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Cliff Kincaid- Contributor
Cliff Kincaid, serves as editor of the Accuracy
in Media (AIM)
Report. A veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff has
appeared on the Fox News programs Hannity & Colmes and
The O'Reilly Factor, where he debated O'Reilly on global
warming, the death penalty,
and the homosexual agenda. He was a guest co-host on CNN's Crossfire
(filling in for Pat Buchanan) in the 1980s, where he confronted
the then-Libyan Ambassador to the U.N. with evidence of Libyan
involvement in international terrorism. Through his America's
Survival, Inc., organization (www.usasurvival.org), he has been
an advocate on behalf of the families of victims of terrorism
and has published reports and held conferences critical of the
United Nations. His articles have appeared in the Washington
Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events, Insight, and
other publications. He served on the staff of Human Events for
several years and was an editorial writer and newsletter editor
for former National Security Council staffer Oliver North at
his Freedom Alliance educational foundation. He has written or
co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign
policy issues. Cliff is married and has three sons.[go to
Kincaid index]
 “Interpreting” The
UN
Hollywood Promotes International Criminal Court…
[Cliff Kincaid] 4/27/05
Hollywood
has come to the rescue of the United Nations. The new film, “The Interpreter,” is
political propaganda designed to boost the image of the United
Nations
and make the
U.S. look bad for opposing the International Criminal Court.
Most reviews have focused on the part of the
plot involving an evil African leader, President Zawani, who
is accused of genocide
and travels to the U.N. in New York for a speech and is the target
of an assassination plot. But the political dimension of the
plot involves the opposition by the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
to his trial by the International Criminal Court (ICC). At the
end of the film, after the drama, suspense, bus bombing and turmoil
in the U.N. headquarters, it is announced that the U.N. Security
Council has voted unanimously to send the Zawani case to the
ICC. That means the U.S. Government, a member of the Security
Council, has caved in, abandoning its opposition to the ICC.
In this version of Hollywood’s happy ending, the assassination
plot is thwarted but the despot is going to get justice in the
end, courtesy of the U.N. Viewers are left with the impression
that the world body is good for something after all, and even
the U.S. Government can see the light.
Nicole Kidman plays the lead role as the interpreter,
the U.N. employee who announces, “I believe in this place. I believe
in what it’s trying to do.” Nevertheless, inside
the world body she takes up a gun, threatening to shoot the African
leader when another assassination plot is foiled. She is convinced
by a U.S. secret service agent played by Sean Penn to drop the
gun and let justice takes its course. The U.N. will dispense
that “justice” through the ICC.
This is depicted in the film as a way to atone
for the anti-American sentiment in the world. The point is
made by Sydney Pollack,
the actor turned director of the film who is also featured in
it. He makes some comment about the danger of the African leader
being assassinated in the U.S. and therefore creating more anti-American
sentiment in the world than there already is. Strangely, the
film’s solution to this problem is to turn him over to
the ICC, which has no death penalty. Which means that this genocidal
killer will remain alive. How’s that for U.N.-style justice?
Arthur J. Pais, in an account published by rediff.com,
quotes Pollack as saying that he convinced the U.N. to cooperate
with
the film by telling Shashi Tharoor, the under secretary-general
for communications and public information at the U.N., that “the
character Nicole Kidman plays is someone passionately committed
to diplomacy and believes in the principles of the U.N.” Pollack
said, “I wanted it to be an argument about the words versus
guns.” Not surprisingly, Secretary-General Kofi Annan gave
his approval. Also not surprisingly, Annan joined Kidman and
Penn at the U.S. premier of the film.
A well-known Hollywood leftist, Penn opposed
the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He believes that the U.N. should
solve problems posed
by aggressive dictators, despite the obvious U.N. failure in
that case. Kidman is a “Goodwill Ambassador” for
the U.N. who received a “World Citizen” award from
the U.N. Correspondents Association.
The film was not only done with the cooperation
of the U.N. but the movie’s official website features an “Inside
the U.N.” tour, where you can learn about all the positive
things the U.N. has done, such as winning a Nobel Prize for its
peacekeeping operations in 1988. Nothing is said about U.N. peacekeepers
engaging in sexual abuse and Kofi Annan’s failure to stop
the genocide in Rwanda when he was director of U.N. peacekeeping.
Video clips from “Inside the U.N.” show then-First
Lady Hillary Clinton saying, “Human rights are women’s
rights,” and British Prime Minster Tony Blair saying, “No
nation can opt out of global warming or fence in its own private
climate.” That’s another poke in the eye at the U.S.,
which refuses to ratify the global warming treaty.
There’s also a very short clip of President Reagan saying, “We
should not confuse the signing of agreements with the solving
of problems.” Reagan made those remarks in New York before
the United Nations General Assembly Special Session Devoted to
Disarmament.
The Reagan remarks, made on June 17, 1982, are
worth reading in their entirety. Reagan also declared, “In the nuclear
era, the major powers bear a special responsibility to ease these
sources of conflict and to refrain from aggression. And that’s
why we’re so deeply concerned by Soviet conduct. Since
World War II, the record of tyranny has included Soviet violation
of the Yalta agreements leading to domination of Eastern Europe,
symbolized by the Berlin Wall—a grim, gray monument to
repression that I visited just a week ago. It includes the takeovers
of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Afghanistan; and the ruthless
repression of the proud people of Poland. Soviet-sponsored guerrillas
and terrorists are at work in Central and South America, in Africa,
the Middle East, in the Caribbean, and in Europe, violating human
rights and unnerving the world with violence. Communist atrocities
in Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere continue to shock
the free world as refugees escape to tell of their horror.
“The decade of so-called detente witnessed
the most massive Soviet buildup of military power in history.
They increased their
defense spending by 40 percent while American defense actually
declined in the same real terms. Soviet aggression and support
for violence around the world have eroded the confidence needed
for arms negotiations. While we exercised unilateral restraint,
they forged ahead and today possess nuclear and conventional
forces far in excess of an adequate deterrent capability.”
What did the U.N. do to stop Soviet aggression
or the Soviet military build-up? The Cold War ended because
of the efforts
of men like Ronald Reagan and Pope John II. In fact, the U.N.
was on the side of the Soviet Union. The U.N. General Assembly
condemned the U.S. liberation of Grenada and the U.N.’s
so-called International Court of Justice labeled U.S. support
for the freedom fighters in Nicaragua a violation of international
law.
Consider another Soviet-backed initiative, the
New International Economic Order (NIEO), which was launched
in 1974 and designed
to transfer money and resources from the U.S. to the Third World.
A U.N. Treaty, the Convention on the Law of the Sea, was described
by Reagan’s Ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick,
as the cornerstone of the NIEO. That’s why Reagan rejected
it. Curiously, the treaty is now before the Senate and is backed
by the Bush administration.
President Bush’s support for John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador
to the U.N. has obscured the areas in which the administration
has caved in to pressure from the world body and its supporters.
In a case where life imitates art, the Bush administration recently
chose not to block a U.N. Security Council resolution to refer
war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan to the ICC. This was
described by the Washington Post as a “dramatic policy
reversal” for the Administration and “the first time
in four years that the Bush administration had departed from
its practice of opposing anything having to do with the ICC.” This
is the same scenario depicted in “The Interpreter.”
Interestingly, Bolton opposed the Law of the
Sea Treaty until the Bush administration endorsed it. It’s fascinating but
entirely predictable that the major media and their liberal allies
on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would create a firestorm
around Bolton’s nomination, mostly because of his criticism
of the world body, but ignore the controversy over the Law of
the Sea Treaty, a measure that subjects most of the world to
the jurisdiction of an international court and taxes U.S. corporations
for the right to mine the seabed. It’s the same pro-U.N.
bias that we see coming out of Hollywood.
The truth is that Bolton, if confirmed, may not
be able to do much about the U.N. or even the U.S. mission
to the U.N. That
mission, incidentally, includes John Kerry’s sister Peggy.
If you were never informed that Peggy Kerry was employed by
the U.S. Mission to the U.N., consider that fact to be additional
evidence of how the major media keep us in the dark about what
actually goes on up there. She campaigned for her brother last
year. Why is there not a controversy over this?
One thing is certain: if Bolton is finally confirmed and tries
to fire or transfer her, he will once again be accused of being
a bully. You can bet the media will cover that. tRO
copyright
2005 Accuracy in Media
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