A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Abu Aardvark: "Yesterday I skimmed through the final report of the Independent Commission investigating the UN's Oil for Food Program. For 1000+ pages, it didn't contain a lot of surprises - the Duelfer report on WMD already revealed a lot of this information, and press leaks have revealed a lot of the rest - but it did contain a lot of useful documentation and fascinating detail about the operation of the program for all its corruption, ineffectiveness, and contributions to strengthening Saddam's domestic and foreign policy position, the Oil for Food Programme "reversed a serious and deteriorating food crisis" in Iraq. It saved a lot of people, especially the young and vulnerable."
Paper Chase: "The UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) said Monday that final results of Afghanistan's legislative polls will be announced on Wednesday [press release, PDF], and that fraud allegations will not call the results into question. The September 18 vote was the first opportunity for Afghans to elect members to its Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament ... A JEMB spokesman said Monday that "All complaints of the losing candidates have been dealt with carefully and very few have been accompanied with facts such as time and locations. We are confident that the legitimacy of the elections is intact." A slow vote count and the fraud allegations have delayed the announcement of official results, originally scheduled for October 19. Reuters has more."
Illmethinks: "This article by Stirling Newberry gives a great example of how the right wing (little "r") closet dwellers love to stir up trouble and how they accomplish it: "The Republican Congress is on the oil for food which hunt."
Daily Kos: "After their deep concern with the "oil for food" scandal, I am positive the Right Wing (Faux, et al.) will be all over this theft from the good people of Iraq: "An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly." This is the type of story that is unlikely to create trust for the United States in Iraq."
Democracy Arsenal: "There's an important debate underway on America Abroad about where the liberal internationalist consensus for humanitarian intervention stands after Iraq (see Anne-Marie Slaughter's latest post for a partial summary). The gist is an argument over whether, as David Rieff claims, after Iraq, humanitarian intervention can no longer be distinguished from self-interested, imperialistic interventions done under the guise of promoting human rights and ousting despots. ... Iraq has taught us key lessons that can and must guide future thinking on humanitarian intervention, mostly raising the bar for when we should intervene and how we need to do it. I list 10 of them: 2. While it Need Not Necessarily Derive from Any Single Source, Legitimacy is Essential - Anne-Marie Slaughter and Ivo Daalder illuminate how the US operation in Kosovo, though without UN imprimatur, had the effect of "pushing" international law to provide broader license for similar interventions, culminating in this Fall's adoption of a UN "responsibility to protect" (a duty that, unaccountably, has not been invoked in Darfur)."
Selected summary of United Nations related news and events
Iran to Propose Peace Solution to UN
Attack Shows Boldness of Somali Pirates
Experts Meet to Draw up Bird Flu Battle Plan
Bird Flu Pandemic May Have Worldwide Cost of $800 Billion
CONGO: Food Shortage Looming, FAO Official Says
Cocaine Smugglers Using High-Tech Boats
World Tourism Faces Growing Climate-Change Risk, UN Agency Says
From Reuters: "Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara said on Monday that Damascus was keen to cooperate with a United Nations probe into the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri."
An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly. [Full Story]
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Kinshasa on the Potomac: "The details on the measures taken to halt the latest outbreak of H5 in China are, in the words of Noureddin Mona, representative for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in China, "not a good signal." Almost 370,000 birds were culled in the affected area, a 3km zone in Liaoning province. Similar massive cullings have been carried out in other countries. Even if H5N1 never makes it into the human population in a strain that can sustain human-to-human transmission, the amount of economic damage being done is considerable and will only grow."
Paper Chase: "The US has circulated a draft UN Security Council resolution that would extend the UN mandate of 180,000 multinational force currently in Iraq for another year. The US-led multinational force was originally authorized in May 2004 under UN Security Council resolution 1546. The latest draft, which the US proposed on Wednesday, is expected to draw opposition from Russia and others on the Security Council, and it represents a departure from previous mandates, which have required renewal every six months. The current UN mandate expires following parliamentary elections on Dec. 15, but it would be extended under the US draft resolution to Dec. 31, 2006."
Think Progress: "Earler this year, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said the United States was adhering to both U.S. law and treaty obligations outlawing torture. But the Washington Post reports today that the U.S. is keeping prisoners in a system of secret, "black-site" prisons around the world, where they can be treated to punishment which the U.N. Convention on torture and U.S. military law does not allow."
Coalition for Darfur: "From the BBC: "Ethiopia and Eritrea have moved more troops and tanks towards their common border, a United Nations official says. The UN has revised its assessment of the border situation between the two countries from "stable" to "tense". Ethiopia has not withdrawn its troops from land awarded to Eritrea by an international demarcation commission. The demarcation followed a border war in which 70,000 people died. Eritrea has recently restricted the operations of UN troops patrolling the border. A source at the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Unmee) told journalists on Wednesday that both countries have moved more troops and tanks towards the border in the past two or three weeks."
Disinformation: "The declaration last week by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that "Israel must be wiped off the map" has triggered diplomatic shifts about Iran's nuclear weapons program. Ahmadinejad's comments have angered the United Nations, Russia, and others who had given Iran tacit support. James Forsyth also examines UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's reaction, and his use of 'reframing' tactics to influence the subsequent debate."
Informed Comment: "Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari asked the UN to extend the mandate for coalition troops in Iraq for up to another year. But the Iraqi government wants the UN to review the resolution 8 months from now, and at any time that the Iraqi government requests a review."
Simon World: "Bates Gill is not just a spoonerism of the world's richest man. He is a noted expert on China and amongst other things, the HIV/AIDS problem in China. Meanwhile China has a well-known penchant for fiddling statistics, especially as many public servants are measured by these statistics. But sometimes this can hide positive trends for fear of ridicule. The SCMP reports on Bates Gill's observations: "Beijing may be keeping new estimates of the number of HIV infections on the mainland secret because they are lower than previously published figures and could undermine the government's credibility... This could be the reason why the official HIV figure had remained at 840,000 for the past two years, said Bates Gill, a China expert at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. The estimate of 840,000 HIV-positive cases was arrived at using modeling techniques, and was the result of a co-operative effort between China, the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids."
Thoughts From Kansas: "Dana Priest has a stunning article in today's Post, CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons: "The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago ... CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law."
Selected summary of United Nations related news and events
Bird flu pandemic may force countries to shut down, says UN official
United Nations Launches Children's AIDS Campaign
General Assembly designates International
Holocaust Remembrance Day
U.N. Agencies Say Quake Donations Lagging
Syria 'will let Hariri death inquiry see Assad relatives'
Bolton on U.N. Demands for Syrian Cooperation
Escalating Climate Change Impacting Human Health
Drying Lakes 'will soon be swamps'
JORDAN: The Fight Against Drug Addiction Reaches Women
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Heretik: "The Joint Task Force at Guantanamo admits there have been at least thirty six suicide attempts by twenty two detainees.... UN REPRESENTATIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS have finally been invited to the prison. However, the United States says no detainees will be allowed to be interiewed alone."
Democracy Arsenal: "I wrote about this last week, but the reports now are that the second wave of post-earthquake deaths from disease and exposure are already beginning. UN agencies will have to scale back their aid this week unless more donor money flows fast. If tens of thousands of Pakistanis die this winter because not enough help reached them, Pakistan's number one international "partner" - the US - is the most likely target for blame."
Agonist: "Big oil groups implicated in oil-for-food scandal - Financial Times - Well known international oil companies used traders to distance themselves from the illegal surcharges being paid under the United Nations oil-for-food deal in Iraq, the final Volcker report has concluded. But only one major oil company was shamed by the 623-page report: Texaco, part of Chevron, the US's second largest energy group. The report states: "A more nefarious purpose for an oil trader, or oil company, to purchase oil from a contractor, rather than directly from Somo [Iraq's oil company] was to maintain an apparent distance from the payment of illicit oil surcharges."
Eccentric Star: "Pentagon Invites UN Torture Investigator to Guantanamo - (Reuters) "The United States on Friday invited three UN human rights investigators, including the one who examines torture allegations, to visit the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in a bid to show "we have nothing to hide." The Pentagon said the invitations were extended to Austria's Manfred Nowak, special investigator for the United Nations on torture, Pakistan's Asma Jahangir, who focuses on religious freedom, and Algeria's Leila Zerrougui, who looks into arbitrary detention."
Friends of Ethiopia: "Economist: "It is a reasonable question: if Eritrea and Ethiopia are intent on fighting and the UN cannot stop them, the blue helmets might as well leave. Yet to blame the UN for the crisis is to miss the point. The peacekeepers were never intended to enforce peace. Rather, they were charged with deterring cross-border scuffles and reporting them when they occurred-and this they have admirably done."
This Modern World: "I'm really sick of hearing the liberal-hawks-turned-peaceniks claim that they supported the war only because of Colin Powell's breathtaking performance before the UN, and are shocked and saddened to learn they were lied to. You supported the war because you didn't have the courage to buck what you perceived as mainstream opinion, didn't want to align yourselves with all those dirty hippies marching in the streets. As it turns out, of course, the dirty hippies, i.e. citizens from all walks of life, turned out to be a lot more on the mark than you were."
Red State: "Iran finds the U.N. Security Council statement condemning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his Hitler-like call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" unacceptable... Secretary-General Annan's 27 October statement expressed dismay over Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be wiped off the map. Coming after Israel's call to expel Iran from the United Nations, the diplomatic pressure may be "unacceptable" to Iran. Combined, Annan's "intention" to adjust his agenda and the Security Council's "condemnation" constitute only a good first step in the right direction."
"The United Nation Security Council today unanimously called on Syria to detain Syrian suspects identified by an independent probe into the terrorist assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and clarify all unresolved issues, threatening 'further action' in the case of non-compliance.
At a special ministerial-level session, the 15-member body adopted a resolution endorsing the findings of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) into the assassination. Resolution 1636 took note "with extreme concern" of the UNIIIC's conclusion that "while the Syrian authorities have cooperated in form but not substance with the Commission, several Syrian officials tried to mislead the Commission by giving false or inaccurate information." MORE