Well, this was predictable. No sooner had North Korea's attempted missile splashed prematurely into the ocean than giddy UN-bashers began pointingtheirfingers accusingly at the UN Security Council, diplomacy, and, hell, even the entire goal of non-proliferation. Simply because the words "North Korea" and "missile" were involved, hawks are shaking their sabers in the direction of the easiest scapegoat -- which is, unsurprisingly, the United Nations.
A little perspective: North Korea broke the rules. But it also completely flubbed its highly touted missile launch, an achievement that was supposed to achieve glory for the DPRK and strike fear in the heart of America. Instead, the missile is lying dormant on the ocean floor -- probably bubbling its musical paeans to Kim Jung Il incomprehensibly. There was never any danger to U.S. security, and now there's even less so, given the project's failure.
Keep in mind that this missile launch also had nothing to do with North Korea's nuclear program. Yes, the rocket would be -- in Kim Jung Il's fantasy world -- filled to the brim with nuclear explosiveness...but it wasn't. And couldn't be -- thanks, it's worth pointing out, to the shift toward diplomacy that the Bush Administration undertook in its second term. Its first term warmongering and stick-wielding only pushed North Korea out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, induced it to kick inspectors out of the country, and re-start its uranium enrichment process. As Dana Carvey might put it, before diplomacy, nuclear program; after diplomacy, no nuclear program.
So why mock the entire principle of non-proliferation over a failed, overhyped missile test that couldn't even carry nuclear material? And what exactly do hawks have in mind when they sputter about "getting tougher" with North Korea? Bombing? Tighter sanctions? Even this latter step -- unlikely to occur, given Chinese and Russian opposition, and of questionable efficacy, considering the possible damage to North Korea's already beleaguered civilian population -- would amount to taking the bait of Pyongyang's petty provocation. North Korea had rashly threatened to withdraw from the six-party talks in response to even Security Council discussion of its "satellite" launch; this is ridiculous bluster, but there is no sense in feeding such brinkmanship. Rather than escalate tensions between both sides, the bestsolution remains to ignore North Korea's latest bit of melodramatic theater (and a poor performance it was indeed), reprimand its rule-breaking, and focus on more important non-proliferation work.
(image from flickr user BHowdy under a Creative Commons license)
I've never owned a car and I've lived between Washington D.C. and Manhattan for most of my adult life. Before that I lived on organic farms in Lebanon.
It's interesting to read this and consider that there may be some ancillary benefits to living in a big city:
Generally speaking, studies have shown that city dwellers, who frequent public transportation, occupy smaller-than-average and multiunit living spaces, use less energy to heat and cool, tend to have lower carbon footprints than their suburban or rural counterparts, who often have bigger homes, use more energy to heat and cool, and typically drive themselves to and fro.
A 2008 report by the Brookings Institution, for example, found that the average American in a metropolitan area has a carbon footprint of 8.21 tons — 14 percent less than the average American living outside the city.
The flip side is that lately, I've become more and more sensitive to the smell of exhaust in New York. In day to day city living, you rarely think about the smell of air, but when you do, it's somewhat alarming to realize how much fouler it is than country air.
There are many ways to help make a difference, from donating to important causes to raising awareness to pressuring elected officials. Each is a critical function and should be lauded.
A few courageous individuals choose to go out in the field and put their lives on the line. They deserve our utmost respect:
Soaring violence in Somalia and Afghanistan helped make 2008 the most dangerous year on record for aid workers, with 122 killed while carrying out their work, a report showed on Monday.
Aid work is now more risky than U.N. peacekeeping as attacks become increasingly politically motivated in some countries, researchers said.
Last year marked a surge in violence against international relief workers and local U.N. contractors such as the truck drivers who deliver food aid in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.
There has also been a dramatic increase in kidnappings over the past three years. The latest in Sudan took place on Saturday when unknown armed men snatched two female aid workers, a French and a Canadian, from their compound in southern Darfur.
Altogether, 260 humanitarian workers were attacked in 155 serious incidents in 2008 -- compared with 27 incidents in 1998, according to figures compiled by the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) in New York and the Overseas Development Institute in London.
NASA releases new satellite imagery showing shrinking ice levels in the Artic Sea. H/t News Unfiltered.
The latest Arctic sea ice data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that the decade-long trend of shrinking sea ice cover is continuing. New evidence from satellite observations also shows that the ice cap is thinning as well.
Arctic sea ice works like an air conditioner for the global climate system. Ice naturally cools air and water masses, plays a key role in ocean circulation, and reflects solar radiation back into space. In recent years, Arctic sea ice has been declining at a surprising rate.
Scientists who track Arctic sea ice cover from space announced today that this winter had the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record. The six lowest maximum events since satellite monitoring began in 1979 have all occurred in the past six years (2004-2009).
Until recently, the majority of Arctic sea ice survived at least one summer and often several. But things have changed dramatically, according to a team of University of Colorado, Boulder, scientists led by Charles Fowler. Thin seasonal ice -- ice that melts and re-freezes every year -- makes up about 70 percent of the Arctic sea ice in wintertime, up from 40 to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Thicker ice, which survives two or more years, now comprises just 10 percent of wintertime ice cover, down from 30 to 40 percent.
According to researchers from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., the maximum sea ice extent for 2008-09, reached on Feb. 28, was 5.85 million square miles. That is 278,000 square miles less than the average extent for 1979 to 2000.
According to the dictates of pragmatism, one couldn't have reasonably expected President Obama to drop the g-word -- referencing the genocide of the Armenians in World War I, which Turkey has persistently refused to label as such -- while speaking in Turkey, his campaign promise to do so notwithstanding. And, in fact, the portion of Obama's speech in Turkey addressing the issue, while perhaps evasive, did address the matter in a commonsensically productive manner.
While there has been a good deal of commentary about my views, this is really about how the Turkish and Armenian people deal with the past. And the best way forward for the Turkish and Armenian people is a process that works through the past in a way that is honest, open and constructive.
Whether or not the President of the United States of America says the word genocide is indeed a political calculation. The politicization of this usage of a single word stems partially from U.S. domestic politics (which is why it will be much more interesting to see if and how Obama pivots when he makes the president's traditional statement to Armenian-Americans in a couple weeks) and partially from the heavy, almost all-consuming significance that the word has acquired (and which, four and a half years after President Bush declared Darfur a "genocide," to much fanfare and little action, is clearly not productive). And in this sense, what matters moreis that Turkey and Armenia deal with this issue, and with their own relations with one another. The opening of the closed Armenian-Turkish border is no small accomplishment, and, though it may appear to be simply this year's entry in the annual casuistry explaining the particularly inopportune timing of a genocide resolution, achieving tangible ends can lay claim to an upper hand over a declaration that everyone assures will derail progress on some Turkey-related foreign affairs project or another.
Yet for a dialogue between Turkey and Armenia to be truly "honest" and "open," truths need to be acknowledged -- and spoken aloud. It is morally repugnant that Turkey continues to deny that genocide occurred within its bounds, and the international coup that its leaders have consolidated -- convincing the world that any mention of a "genocide" of the Armenians would provoke waves of hostility and summarily end cooperation with Turkey -- is even more perverse. Somehow, the onus is consistently placed on external actors -- such as on an American president -- over the consequences that his words may engender. Never is it considered how out of proportion -- how utterly ridiculous -- it would be for a Turkish government in 2009 to sever all relations with countries, to entirely cease its contributions to projects like that in Iraq, and to take all sorts of other rash steps that might jeopardize its own admission to the European Union, all over the use of a single word by a single world leader, about the actions of a government 90-plus years ago.
Yes, we are talking about genocide, and that is serious. But no, we are not talking about accusing a foreign government of conducting genocide (again, though, on the effectiveness thereof, see Sudan). We are doing what President Obama himself did in his speech, in acknowleding the dark parts of American history, or what the government of Australia is belatedly doing, in apologizing to the aboriginal population that suffered in that country's history. Calling a genocide a genocide is a moral imperative, yes, but it would be better for all involved -- for the Acholi people in northern Uganda, for example, who suffer ethnicity-based counter-insurgency campaigns without worldwide hand-wringing (or attention) over the g-label -- if the term coined by Raphael Lemkin were less fraught with political overtones.
More than a moral decision, though, this should be a constructive one. Leverage should be concentrated on Turkey acceding to this judgment, not on urging the United States not to upset some geopolitical balance that bears striking similarity to what Turkish genocide-deniers would readily have the West believe. Would this be "poking a stick in [Turkey's] eye?" Only, if, effectively, Turkey is allowed to continue holding the stick. Order will not devolve into chaos in Turkey if we talk about the Armenian genocide in 1915 publicly and openly; the incentives weigh very heavily against Turkey acting recklessly in retaliation to such discussion. And then, perhaps, we would not have to again be having this debate next year. That, to me, seems like moving forward.
(image of Armenian Genocide Memorial, in Yerevan, Armenia, from flickr user Rita Willaert under a Creative Commons license)
ON A MOUNTAIN OVERLOOKING ADDIS ABABA - Running is the national sport of Ethiopia. It is also a favorite activity of Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. So, naturally, when he visited Addis for this week's meeting of the Africa Commission, Prime Minister Rasmussen made a point to meet the current world record holding marathoner Haille Gebreselassie for a morning jog. Rasmussen is clearly in better shape than his security detail. But he's no match for Gebreselassie, who ran the Berlin Marathon in under 2 hours, 4 minutes. Here's Gebreselassie explaining the finer points of running at 2,800 meters above sea level to a very winded Prime Minister of Denmark. More photos after the jump.
Ben Smith of the Politico landed an excellent interview with US-UN Ambassador Susan Rice. In it, Ambassador Rice talks about the administration's decision to reverse Bush administration policy and join the UN Human Rights Council.
"We have a record of abject failure from having stayed out. We've been out for the duration and it has not gotten better. It's arguably gotten worse," she said. "We are much better placed to be fighting for the principles we believe in — protection of human rights universally, fighting against the anti-Israel crap and for meaningful action on issues that we care about and ought to be the top of the agenda, things like Zimbabwe, Sudan [and] Burma — by leading and lending our voice from within."
A similar logic is at play with the anti-racism conference, scheduled for April 20 in Geneva, the successor to a 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, that featured sharp condemnations of Israel. The U.S. delegation pulled out of preparatory talks for the conference after negotiators produced a 63-page draft text that featured more condemnation of Israel and demands for reparations for the slave trade.
This kind of ideological openess and pragmatism is a welcome break from the past eight years. The haters will still hate, but all they offer is more of the same.
Kudos to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband for calling Germany out on its sexist gifts to delegations at the NATO summit in France:
The German government are taking every opportunity to fight the downturn. The large box in my (French) hotel room at the NATO summit was a Bosch drill (with extra drill bits). But traditions die hard: women Foreign Ministers were given a Leica camera.
With the G20 outcome document hot off the presses, Anita Sharma dissects what it means for the "bottom billion" and for reacing the millennium development goals. Have a watch!