SecretaryGeneral.org -- Bill Clinton for Secretary General

[Hillary for Pres]

Thought this site might be of interest! It would be great if President Bill Clinton was the Secretary General of the United Nations! There is only one page up so far -- but you have to check it out! www.secretarygeneral.org

[pelagius]

1. Once again: Clinton or any other American can't...

...be Secretary General of the UN. That post is reserved for a person from a nation not on the Security Council.

[trotsky]

2. Um, that's not allowed.

No citizen of a permanent member nation of the UN security council (US, UK, France, China, Russia) is allowed to be the SG.

As far as I can tell, it is a right-wing attempt to rile up the base and their hatred for Clinton.

[Hillary for Pres]

3. it doesnt matter

All that matters is he has the votes.

[trotsky]

4. Um, no, it does matter.

It's in the UN charter.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[pelagius]

6. Check out this site carefully before giving your email address

I used intemperate language in a previous response to this thread, which was quite rightly deleted. I apologize for this. I was unjustifiably rude and perhaps mistaken about the poster's motives.

However, I was suspicious of someone promoting a website to "draft" Bill Clinton for Secretary General of the UN, given that any reputable organization would have done the basic research to discover that no US citizen can serve in that position. When "Hillary for Pres" ignored polite corrections of his misconception and urged others to continue to go to the site, I briefly checked into his background.

"Hillary for Pres" lists his address as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in his user profile and seems to have used his limited posts on DU to promote two websites:

www.secretarygeneral.org
www.votehillary.org

Both these websites ask visitors to leave their email address as a "vote" of support for their respective propositions. No indication is given as to what happens with these addresses. No identifiable national organization claims ownership of these sites.

The secretarygeneral.org website and the votehillary.org website (promoted in this user's profile) are registered to one Adam Parkhomenko who lists addresses in Sausalito, CA and Arlington, VA, respectively. This is public information available using the "whois" function available at any Internet-enabled command prompt or services such as www.whois.org.

A quick Google search identifies Mr. Parkhomenko as an ambitious young man who has earned some notoriety as president of a web-based draft Hillary Clinton movement. His latest venture (begun 10/29/2004 according to Web records) is to draft Bill Clinton for Secretary General of the UN. I leave it to the reader to do his or her own research and form their own judgment about the effectiveness of his efforts.

While I have a certain admiration for Mr. Parkhomenko's general moxie and self-promotional talents, I would encourage him to be (a) more diligent in his research and (b) more forthcoming with what he does with the email addresses he collects.

[pelagius]

7. I want to apologize to "Hilary for Pres" for coming down...

...so hard on him. We have corresponded privately and I am convinced he is sincere in his efforts. He's added a statement to his site explaining the privacy policy.

I respectfully disagree with his position, but was wrong to flame him. Chalk it up to pre-election jitters, please.