Lawmakers ask that U.N. monitor election "A group of congressional Democrats, led by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, has asked the United Nations to monitor this year's presidential election." Fortunately, the UN said no. Unbelievable. I hope that everyone that signed this letter will lose their seat in the November election. What a shameless publicity stunt. "Besides Johnson, Democratic members of Congress signing the letter to Annan were Julia Carson of Indiana; Jerrold Nadler, Edolphus Towns, Joseph Crowley and Carolyn B. Maloney, all of New York; Raul Grijalva of Arizona, Corrine Brown of Florida, Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, Danny K. Davis of Illinois and Michael M. Honda of California."
posted by Oxydude
on Jul 7, 2004 -
114 comments
US demands war crimes immunity But human rights campaigners said the Iraq prison abuse scandal proves that the US needs to be held to account.
"Given the recent revelations... the US has picked one hell of a moment to ask for special treatment," said Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch. -- the annual renewal of US protection from international prosecution for war crimes when serving under UN auspices comes to a vote on Monday.
posted by amberglow
on May 22, 2004 -
34 comments
African AIDS Drug Plan Faces Collapse. The World Health Organization's
Three by Five programme seeks to supply 3 million Africans with anti-HIV drugs by 2005. But it's in danger, due to lack of cash... and opposition from
special interests who seem to be exerting influence over the U.S. government. According to
Stephen Lewis, U.N. Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa, 'If Three by Five fails, as it surely will without the dollars, then there are no excuses left, no rationalisations to hide behind. There will only be the mass graves of the betrayed.'
posted by stonerose
on Mar 17, 2004 -
20 comments
The Brave Tale of Katherine Gun, aka
The Conscience of the Individual versus the State, aka
"How the 'Land of the Free' Stopped Worrying about Legality and Liberty, and Learned to Love Wiretap and Manipulation": "Katharine made the disclosure because she believed that it was necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi citizens and British and American soldiers would die or be maimed.""I have only ever followed my conscience," she said. Pentagon Paper's author Daniel Ellsberg described the leak as
"more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers. Truth-telling like this can stop a war." Norman Solomon asks
" To what extent is the "special relationship" between the two countries to be based on democracy or duplicity? How much do we treasure the substance of civil liberties that make authentic public discourse distinct from the hollowness of secrecy and manipulation? How badly do we want to know what is being done in our names with our tax money? And why is it so rare that conscience takes precedence over expediency?"
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Feb 27, 2004 -
63 comments
Michael, aged 25, was abducted by
Lord's Resistance Army rebels in northern Uganda. His captors beat him on the head with rifle-butts when he was no longer able to carry their loot and left him for dead. Government soldiers
found him a week later. "Termites had started eating me alive," he recalls. Michael's is one of many personal testimonies published in
When the sun sets, we start to worry..., a book launched Thursday by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in conjunction with its
Integrated Regional Information Networks. Using personal accounts and powerful black-and-white photographs,
When the sun sets, we start to
worry... aims to draw attention to the plight of more than a million Ugandan men, women and children whose present existence encompasses a degree of misery and horror seldom seen elsewhere.
posted by mookieproof
on Jan 29, 2004 -
2 comments
An attempt by developing countries to put management of the
Internet under United Nations auspices is likely to be shelved at next month's world information summit in Geneva -
but the issue is now firmly on the international agenda.
posted by Mick
on Nov 10, 2003 -
14 comments
But There's No Oil You Say? The humanitarian situation in northern Uganda is worse than in Iraq, or anywhere else in the world, a senior United Nations official has said. It is a moral outrage" that the world is doing so little for the victims of the war, especially children, says UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland.
The rebels routinely abduct children to serve as sex slaves and fighters. Thousands of children leave their houses in northern Uganda to sleep rough in the major towns, where they feel more safe from the threat of abduction by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The United Nations [should] play a great role in scaling down the violence
The LRA, under shadowy leader Joseph Kony, says it wants to rule Uganda according to the Biblical Ten Commandments. They often mutilate their victims, by cutting off their lips, noses or ears.
posted by turbanhead
on Nov 10, 2003 -
15 comments
Dutch government is distributing cannabis as a prescription painkiller to pharmacies to treat chronically ill patients. The Netherlands are the first country to supply the drug itself, in accordance with United Nations rules on narcotics. This Radio Netherlands article contains an interview with an American expatriate who is now a licensed supplier.
posted by prolific
on Sep 1, 2003 -
26 comments
Kelly warned of 'dark actors playing games Dr David Kelly's recent death has the British press in an uproar. Kelly was the former head of biological inspections in Iraq for the UN mission, Unscom, former deputy head of Porton Down and the Ministry of Defence's senior adviser on biological defence. In July 2002. According to reports the Carlyle Group took a 34% stake in QinetiQ which was splitoff in 2001 from the Porton Down research lab and is now a private company
according to this story The Carlyle Group is profiled here in this explosive
explosive Dutch expose (note the first 1.48 minutes are in Dutch the rest is in English Since David Kelly was himself a micro-biologist in the past connected to Porton Down does he have any connection (as some have claimed: including a radio show I heard this evening) to the 11 or so micro-biologists that have died mysterious deaths after the 911 event? These deaths and there timelines are are extensively documented around the web.Including the following web page----(http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/)----
Is this is an area some creative journalists need to investigate?
posted by thedailygrowl
on Jul 20, 2003 -
48 comments
John Dean's analysis of the administrations case for War. "What I found, in critically examining Bush's evidence, is not pretty. The African uranium matter is merely indicative of larger problems, and troubling questions of potential and widespread criminality when taking the nation to war. It appears that not only the Niger uranium hoax, but most everything else that Bush said about Saddam Hussein's weapons was false, fabricated, exaggerated, or phony."
posted by thedailygrowl
on Jul 18, 2003 -
73 comments
Did you know that... Aid fell in the 1990s—by nearly a third on a per capita basis in Sub-Saharan Africa? In Sub Saharan Africa, half the population lives on less than 1$ a day? At current rates Sub-Saharan Africa will not meet the poverty Goal until 2147? If all the food produced worldwide were distributed equally, every person would be able to consume 2,760 calories a day (hunger is defined as consuming fewer than 1,960 calories a day)? These and more facts can be found in the
2003 UN Human Development Report.
posted by stonerose
on Jul 8, 2003 -
25 comments
Friday Doublethink Fun. "An extraordinary
communication from the United States to UN representatives around the world has been leaked to Greenpeace. In it, the U.S. warns that the simple act of support for a General Assembly meeting to discuss the war will be considered 'unhelpful and directed against the U.S.'"
But really now, do we actually expect the U.S. (which claims it fights to "democratize" the Middle East) to welcome discourse and listen to what the majority of the world may think?
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Apr 4, 2003 -
24 comments
First Casualties? NATO, the U.N. A 3 day old article, but it gave me a much better understanding of the workings of the U.N. and NATO and what the strengths and weaknesses are of each.
"
What is surprising, however, is the trouble the U.N. has had acting effectively even after the U.S.-Soviet rivalry ended. Again and again during the 1990s, the U.N. appeared helpless to meet “unsanctioned” aggressions in places like Rwanda, Liberia, the Horn of Africa and, especially, in the Balkans. "
posted by Ron
on Mar 23, 2003 -
4 comments
Richard Perle in Guardian Shock! Op-ed piece brought to us from the ever-balanced Guardian, bound to whip up a whirlwind of protest in the paper’s letters page tomorrow.
Perhaps you might care to pre-empt Saturday morning’s correspondence.
posted by skellum
on Mar 21, 2003 -
64 comments
Waging Peace: Dr. Robert Muller, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, and one of the people who witnessed the founding of the U.N., says the global body is fulfilling its ultimate purpose:
"Never before in the history of the world has there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue and conversation about the very legitimacy of war".
posted by alms
on Mar 16, 2003 -
19 comments
UN resolution 377, This makes for fascinating reading as this arcane resolution provides for collective action by the general assembly 'if the security council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security'. Hardly applicable.
posted by johnnyboy
on Mar 14, 2003 -
13 comments
In his 1947 letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations Albert Einstein wrote of 'enhancing the moral authority of the UN' and portrayed the United Nations as a "transitional system toward the final goal, which is the establishment of a supranational authority". Is the United Nations the depository of the moral authority of the international community?
Some say no. Is there really such a thing as moral authority or is it one of those intangibles that, as a Supreme Court justice once said about obscenity, we cannot define, but we know it when we see it? Could a "one world government" work and would it really produce "moral authority" ? (More Inside)
posted by Mack Twain
on Feb 5, 2003 -
42 comments
Were from the UN and we're here to help! Question: If you're a UN Weapons Inspector and a man jumps into your vehicle screaming "Save me! Save me!" clutching notebooks to his chest what do you do? The answer is simple, you turn him over to the Iraqi authorities who now claim to have "no information on the incident." This ought to foster more cooperation from Iraqi scientists...good work Blix and Co.
posted by RevGreg
on Jan 25, 2003 -
54 comments
U.S. Vows to Disarm Iraq with or Without U.N. We lead. You follow. Or get out of the way. How this will play out in terms of the very existence of the UN in the near future, the EU, and our attempt to maintain good relationship with Arab countries is anyone's guess. What is yours?
posted by Postroad
on Oct 28, 2002 -
84 comments
Down the memory hole! An eye-opening comparison of how the various media outlets reported the removal of U.N. inspectors from Iraq back in the day
(1998) with today
(2002, and itchin' to fight).
posted by Dirjy
on Oct 25, 2002 -
16 comments
Doomsayers refuted yet again, this time by the
United Nations and the Institute for International Studies, who independently released studies declaring that humanity is, for the most part, in the best condition it’s ever been. (Former MeFi-er DenBeste comments
here.) With more and more studies reaching similar conclusions as
Bjørn Lomborg's "Skeptical Environmentalist" and the CATO Institute's
"It's Getting Better All the Time", I'm on my way to buy myself a new pair of shades. The future does indeed look bright!
posted by dagny
on Oct 11, 2002 -
32 comments
Before we go to war based on whether or not Saddam (or the UN Security Council...) agrees to the Bush administration's proposed UN resolution, would anyone care to discuss what their proposed resolution actually says?
Apparently,
the text of the resolution isn't in the public domain... but things leak. According to
this article, the resolution allows the UN or its members (including the US) to station armed guards in Iraq, establish no-fly and no-drive zones, and create exclusive ground and air transit corridors. Robert Fisk, one of England's most respected reporters,
believes the resolution is a poison pill, designed to lead to "regime change", whether he accepts it or not. So, what else do we know about the proposed resolution, and
why isn't anyone talking about it?
posted by insomnia_lj
on Oct 9, 2002 -
32 comments
The Ultimatum has been delivered to the UN... This conflict, simmering for over ten years is about to erupt. "In strict accordance with international law," unilatteral military action is imminent unless demands are met. Animosity has been mounting steadily for months, and Russia is ready to invade Georgia. "No one can deny today, and for ourselves we are certain, that Georgian territory is sheltering both those who are implicated in the attacks on the United States and a direct operative involved in the attacks on housing units in Russia," Mr. Putin said on Russian television, echoing the logic U.S. President George W. Bush has used to rally international support for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. The United States said it would not support Mr. Putin if he carried out his threat to attack Chechen rebel bases in Georgia, and slammed him for suggesting he might. "The United States strongly supports Georgia's territorial integrity and would oppose any unilateral military action by Russia inside Georgia," a U.S. State Department spokesman said. This all seems rather hypocritical, business as usual new world order politics: Is the price of getting UN Security Council approval on Iraq going to be public and secret deals, and is this really about the Chechens, or about breakaway republics and Caspian Sea oil? And what about China? Will we rubberstamp their ambitions re: Taiwan, Spratley Islands, Mongolia? And finally, why Georgia? I know they put up a two-bit Olympics and never caught that one terrorist bomber, but really, Georgia?
posted by Mack Twain
on Sep 13, 2002 -
25 comments
The World Summit on Sustainable Development, aka "Earth Summit II," will start soon in Johannesburg, ten years after the Rio
Earth Summit. Have things improved at all in the last ten years?
While there are some reasons to be
optimistic, the data isn't cheerful. Our
climate is growing unstable; tens of millions are
dying or likely to die, and hundreds of millions more likely to be made refugees, because of environmental pollution and degraded ecosystems; and half the plants and animals on the planet seem
headed for extinction over the next century. In short, things are grim.
What steps, big or small, are you taking to do your part for the environment?
posted by AlexSteffen
on Aug 17, 2002 -
30 comments
The Times has a story about a preliminary UN report claiming there could have been a cover-up regarding the "wedding-party airstrike" earlier this month. Reuters/Yahoo also has
the story but it's not getting much coverage in US media.
This blog claims the story is front page material in a few european countries. The US military
denies any cover up.
posted by rhyax
on Jul 29, 2002 -
13 comments
Gore questions timing of Iraq concern Is it proper to invade Iraq? This would be an unprecedented move for the US military as Iraq has not attacked the US anyone the US has defense treaties with.
"Republican National Committee spokesman Jim Dyke called Gore's comments "irresponsible."
"This is no time to attack the president or Republicans for their handling of the war for political gain," he said."
Hmmm..so he admits the Iraqi attack IS for partisan political gain, eh? I would have never suspected it.
posted by nofundy
on Jul 26, 2002 -
27 comments
