We're filthy rich - now help us!! This is mostly an artice about Kyoto, but one little paragraph left my jaw wide open to see that OPEC thinks they should be compensated if the world finds a better way... I guess it's not a unique concept though - does anyone have some other examples of a (potentially) failing industry that wants compensation?? My apologies if I've missed this in another thread somewhere...
posted by matty
on Dec 12, 2003 -
17 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
Diego Garcia islanders await call to go home. 'Cherry and thousands of other islanders were the victims of a brutal depopulation strategy by Britain in the 1960s and 1970s which sought to hand over an empty island to the United States for use as a key military base. The depopulation campaign ended in 1973 with the removal of the last islanders, who were dumped on the quays of the Mauritian capital, Port Louis ... '
The Chagos Islands: A sordid tale. 'The story involves "bribes" from the United States, racism among senior civil servants, and the UK Government deceiving parliament and the United Nations.'
The Chagos archipelago: Decolonisation and human rights., by the Southern African Human Rights NGO Network, includes a brief history of the islands from original settlement by French settlers and African slaves. 'For a people as a whole to be actually victimised by the act of forced eviction from their homeland must be the most humiliating, supreme injustice and degrading treatment any people can be made to undergo. '
posted by plep
on Jul 29, 2003 -
4 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
Blix: US was bent on war. In a scathing attack on Britain and the US, Mr Blix accused them of planning the war "well in advance" and of "fabricating" evidence against Iraq to justify their campaign.
posted by skallas
on Apr 12, 2003 -
51 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
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
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
In spite of his promise that human rights would take precedence over concerns of state sovereignty,
Kofi Annan's philosophy of neutrality and nonviolence in the face of genocide and dictators, costs over 7,000 lives at Srebrenica, and 800,000 in Rwanda alone.
posted by semmi
on Oct 3, 2002 -
18 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
White House: Bush misstated report on Iraq A senior White House official acknowledged Saturday night that the 1998 report did not say what Bush claimed. 'What happened was, we formed our own conclusions based on the report ,' The photograph in question was not U.N. intelligence imaging but simply a picture from a commercial satellite imaging company
Did he think no one would notice?
posted by bas67
on Sep 7, 2002 -
32 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
Study Warns of Stagnation in Arab Societies. "The report, the first United Nations human development report devoted to a single region, was prepared by Arab intellectuals from a variety of disciplines, who do not fault others for what they see as the "deficits" in contemporary Arab culture, Ms. Khalaf Hunaidi said."
posted by Zool
on Jul 1, 2002 -
11 comments
Tired of the intrusiveness of the Federal Government? Hate the United Nations? Grant County welcomes you! About the size of Connecticut with a population of 7,500, this rural Oregon County recently passed ballot measures banning the UN and allowing people to cut trees on federal land, with or without the U.S. Forest Service approval. Government agencies are engaged in something called
"Rural Cleansing" according to WSJ reporter Kimberley A. Strassel, and the people are having some success standing up to the government. Are these people kooks? Is Civil disobedience wrong? Are you in, out, or straddling the fence? Ready to move?
posted by Mack Twain
on Jun 4, 2002 -
20 comments
Call for permanent Jenin presence The disbanded United Nations fact-finding mission to Jenin has written to Secretary General Kofi Annan calling for a constant international presence in Palestinian refugee camps.
Alas, it was the UN that ran the refugee camp that was known as the bomb factory and home of the suicide bombers. Wouldn't an armed forcez be more effective?
posted by Postroad
on May 3, 2002 -
23 comments
Anti-Idiotarian Coalition/United Blogging Nation? It seems all this talk of UN bias has has some bloggers so frustrated and angry that they feel it's time to band together as a political force, and the beginnings of a movement are
taking shape. Legal actions, media attention, and even a full fledged political party are all ideas that have been bandied about. They already have a couple of legal eagles and prominent
blogging figures offering services/resources. All they need now are t-shirts.
Oh wait, they have
those too. One Nation, under Blog...
posted by mikhail
on May 2, 2002 -
15 comments
(.) (.) The United Nations: Non partisan independant arbiter of international matters or hyper-politicized arena? You make the call
posted by BentPenguin
on May 1, 2002 -
20 comments
