One of the most persistent stories about the UN that is circulated by people, who, shall we say, are pre-disposed to believing conspiracy theories, is that the UN is plotting to take Americans' guns away. The latest manifestation of this meme occurred last month on the blog of National Association of Gun Rights, which is circulating an online petition to demand that the Senate vote against the UN "Arms Control Treaty." The petition says, "The UN’s “Small Arms
Presidents Bush and Clinton team up for a new public service announcement for Haiti relief efforts.
The Haitian government has not issued a mortality estimate since January 28, when the government said that 112,405 had died. However, on February 3 the government said that as many as 200,000 may have been killed in the earthquake. Meanwhile, one of the major new developments of the past week has been a mass exodus from Port au Prince to rural areas. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that over 400,000 Haitians have fled Port au Prince for rural areas in the past two weeks. Food distribution is still a challenge.
The author of The Bottom Billion, Wars Guns and Votes sits down with me to talk about Haiti reconstruction. Collier has something of a front line view of this effort. He was tapped by the secretary general to write a report on Haiti's recovery for the United Nations last year. In the diavlog, Paul explains the roots of Haiti's poverty and explains how best the international community can manage Haiti's recovery.
Steve Clemons lands a really great interview with Kenyan Vice President Kalonzo "Steven" Musyoka, who was in Washington, D.C. this week for the National Prayer Breakfast. Anyone interested in Somalia and the politics of East Africa should spend the next 8 minutes watching this video.
According to the Washington Post, the Taliban leadership council in Quetta is denying that United Nations’ special representative Kai Eide met with any of its members in Dubai last month.
The United States Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair presented the annual threat assessment of the U.S. intelligence community to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. This is tucked into page 37:
Last week, the communications director for the past four Republican U.S. Ambassadors to the United Nations wrote a scurrilous attack on Susan Rice on Huffington Post. I call the attack "scurrilous," because as I noted at the time, the author completely mis-characterized the findings of a report to suggest that Rice was insufficiently engaged at the United Nations.