After he was nominated by President Trump to lead the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM), Ken Isaacs made his Twitter account private in a failed bid to tamp down criticism of his history of xenophobic and Islamophobic comments. It didn’t work. His nomination was just defeated.
The UN migration agency’s member states have rejected President Trump’s nominee for director-general, making it only the second time in the agency’s history that it will not be led by an American.
Ken Isaacs, an executive with a Christian charity, was eliminated after three voting rounds, AFP reported…
…The IOM has been led by an American throughout its 67-year history with one exception, from 1961 to 1969.
The IOM will be headed instead by former EU commissioner, Antonio Vitorino of Portugal. According to reporting from the BBC, European nations were instrumental in Isaacs’ defeat as they preferred someone who could “find a common response to the migrant crisis.” It probably didn’t help America’s cause that Isaacs is a climate change denier.
I say “America’s cause,” but I don’t even know what that means anymore. For most of us, Mr. Isaacs didn’t offer the kind of influence and representation that we want our country to have, so it’s probably preferable that someone from Portugal heads this organization. If nothing else, what Mr. Vitorino does or doesn’t do will not add to our national humiliation.
Much as I thoroughly despise Trump & his horrible racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, bigoted, science/climate-change denying asshole “picks” for different positions of power, I’m not at all sad that someone else – in this case, someone from Portugal – head up some of these important organizations for a change.
USA is a failing & flailing empire. Time for some other countries to step in, pick up the slack and hopefully do a better job than any Trumpist would.
JMHO, of course.
The times they are a-changing. Maybe this change is for the better.
Vitorino is a socialist too, always a plus that.
Another day another Trump win!
Good to see the Resistance has spread abroad.
March on Sunday!
The Resistance has always been present to those who see.
I don’t trust an acolyte of Arthur Gilroy to give us sound advice on How To Be A Progressive.
. . . not “0”) and justified.
I too, have no problem with members of the international community filling some of these vacancies. Could a United Nations committee be assigned the task of picking our next Supreme Court judge too?
Thank heavens the entire world hasn’t gone mad!
Most of the reporting while noting Isaac’s views, is casting this as more of a reaction to Trump who pulled American out of the Compact for Migration which I had not heard before.
So I’d make the headline “Trump pick can’t escape Trump anvil.”
More damage.
Unfortunately so many experienced people have quit or retired we are left with those who tolerate or suck up to Trump.
If this country survives as a representative democracy and swings back to a more liberal society — hell, if the world survives the insanity gnawing at our vitals — future historians will look back upon Trump and his enablers as the greatest traitors in American history.
But history, it’s said, is written by the victors….
Clearly an international organization involved with humanitarian assistance and humane tolerance cannot be headed by a citizen beholden to a fascist government and impulsive imbecile authoritarian strongman. Just as it is obvious that TrumpAmerica cannot have a seat on any UN human rights committees. TrumpAmerica and its illegitimate leader are openly hostile to every ideal and goal of the UN—to do so would be irrational.
It is wise for the rest of the world’s democracies to understand this is not a short term aberration. Since the US is currently in the process of permanently disassembling its own government, its representatives should not have fiduciary responsibility in any international body.
Happy Fourth! Fly those precision fighter squadrons! Rockets! Revel in that sweet, sweet militarism!
America’s “cause” should be discerned by what its leadership says and does.
We are avowed violators of human rights and embrace torture, reveling in the misery of others intentionally brought about by our policy. We are climate science deniers. We trash our allies on a foundation of despicable lies, and punish them with tariffs that make no sense. And we embrace dictators and their ways, making it easier for them by virtue of our embrace. We no longer aspire to justice as much as we are driven by vengeance.
The overall net effect of our policy on the world stage is eerily similar to and further’s the goals of Putin’s Russia, never considered a US ally, that seeks to destabilize and undermine the western alliance. And Trump has made clear by his words and actions that he has no higher aspiration than the warm embrace and approval of Putin, and has made America subservient to that goal.
In less than two years, Trump as president has made clear that America’s “cause” is no longer leader of the free world. We have, as its said, “showed our behinds” and set ourselves apart from allies to embrace nations and ideals we were once cherished for standing against.
wonderful writing, bravo.
. . . Trump regime is.
And no,
(There, fixed your omission of those necessary “scare quotes” for you while I was at it.)
Not when “we”, i.e., the majority of the population, deplore the positions/actions you attribute to us when they’re actually attributable only to that illegitimate regime which seized power in a corrupt election exploiting anti-democratic flaws in our electoral system, Russian meddling, Comey’s misconduct, NY FBI office misconduct, the Banana Republican voter-suppression campaign, Corporate Media malfeasance, . . .
My portion of “us” utterly repudiates those Banana-Republican/Trump-regime policies/actions as completely unrepresentative of America’s “cause”. Pretty sure polling shows the majority with me, not with the illegitimate regime on most/all items you list.
Thanks for the edits and I agree with you, however I stand by what I wrote and the perspective from which it was written, and that is from the outsider looking in, they wonder: how does a people elect an enlightened Obama and follow that with an ignorant bigot and likely traitor in Trump? The world sees that as our problem for which “we” are responsible for.
. . . feels important to maintain — i.e., to insist on — the Reality that they are not us.
Does mean that to avoid that guilt-by-association we have to not be Good Germans, but resist and overturn their evil by every legitimate means available to us.