Matthew Lee of Inner City Press and I hit the very small screen to debate and discuss the UN's role in Iraq, the new Darfur resolution, the UN and new media and more. Enjoy!
Earlier this week UN Dispatch offered a critique of Megadeth's title track to their new album "United Abominations." The piece got some attention from heavy metal discussion boards, and on the website of Megadeth's record label front man Dave Mustaine responds to our criticisms. "I would rather feel right and be wrong with the semantics or facts in the song...than to feel wrong and be right," writes Mustaine in a lengthy post.
Good for Mustaine to admit he misrepresented facts about the United Nations in his song, even if he still feels them to be true. (There is a word for this by the way.)
Also, to his credit, Mustaine sees the silver lining of this little spat:
"Bottom line is I am stoked to see you all having this discussion about things that matter to us all. What a victory...I dig it when [fans] get to have discussions like this because we all win; we all learn something."We dig it too. Promoting thoughtful discussions about the United Nations and multilateral diplomacy is what this site is all about.
Last summer, UN Dispatch learned that the heavy metal band Megadeth was recording an album titled "United Abominations," which featured cover art depicting a 9-11 style attack on the UN building in New York. Naturally, we thought it distasteful in the least. But without hearing the album, we reserved final judgment. Until now.
The album was released in late May. But not being much of a Megadeth fan, I forgot to pencil the release date into my calender. Still, we at UN Dispatch refuse to let Megadeth's witless screed go unchallenged. Below the jump is a verse-by-verse response to the album's title track. We listened so you don't have to.
A report leaked to the Associated Press suggests that the IAEA and North Korea have formally reached an agreement on the containment and surveillance of North Korean nuclear facilities. From the AP:
The confidential four-page report said North Korea has agreed to provide International Atomic Energy Agency experts with needed technical information, access and other help needed to shut down North Korea's plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear facility. The report will be discussed by the agency's 35-nation board and is expected to be approved as early as Monday, paving the way for the beginning of the IAEA mission overseeing the shutdown and eventual dismantling of the Yongbyon facility.This report from Vienna, plus news stemming from a meeting between Kim Jong Ill and China's foreign minister, seems to confirm a newfound willingness among the North Korean government to cooperate with the international community on nuclear disarmament. Obviously, it is too early to declare victory. But we do seem to be closer to North Korean disarmament than anytime time since 2002, when DPRK withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and booted IAEA inspectors from North Korea.
The Free Republic, in its traditionally understated way, highlights an Investors Business Daily editorial excoriating Ban Ki-moon for making the connection between climate change and the Darfur conflict. "The new U.N. secretary general invokes a Twinkie defense," says the editorial. "Excusing Islamofascist genocide in Darfur by blaming it on global warming. Forget the Chinese weapons. According to Ban Ki-moon, your SUV is responsible."
The Atlantic Monthly ran an excellent feature on this topic two months ago. Darfur, which is composed of the three provinces in Sudan's west, enjoys little natural wealth. It is a vast, unforgiving, and arid place. But it was not always as arid as it is today. As the Atlantic Monthly piece by Stephan Faris explains, southward expansion of the Sahara desert toward Darfur is a relatively recent phenomenon.
The desertification of Darfur has pit traditionally agrarian "black African" tribes in competition for arable land with nomadic tribes of ethnic-Arab herders. Of course, that alone is not sufficient to explain the accusations of genocide. Rather, when ethnic Darfuri tribes launched a rebellion against the central government in Khartoum in 2003, the government recruited and armed militias drawn from ethnic-Arab tribes, with promises that the land would be theirs. The fact that the two groups competed for natural resources in ways they had not in previous generations made the government's strategy to recruit militias that much easier.
Some may recall the so-called "Cash for Kim" scandal trumpeted by the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal in which the Journal alledged that "hundreds of millions of dollars" had been systematically diverted from the United Nations Development Program to the coffers of Kim Jong Il. A preliminary audit of UN agencies in North Korea that was released over the weekend, finds no large scale diversions of cash to the North Korean government.
Over on her Pajamas Media outlet Claudia Rosett sets her sites on Unicef. The offense? Having the temerity to warn about a potential food shortage in North Korea thusly: "A potential food crisis faces the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, with serious flooding last year leading to a possible shortfall of 1 million to tons of grain, a fifth of total food requirement for 2007..."
According to Rosett, Unicef is worthy of our scorn because the children's aid organization should have blamed the government of Kim Jong Il for the shortage instead. She may have a point. Except for the fact that the very next paragraph of the UN News Center report to which she refers, says: "Meanwhile, far less food is coming into the country because of the Government's decision not to accept humanitarian aid, Unicef country representative Gopalan Balagopal said on a recent visit to his agency's headquarters in New York." (emphasis mine.) Rosett seems to have artfully excluded this point.
Of course, anyone with even a basic understanding of North Korea would understand the underlying reason behind the dire humanitarian situation. That said, it is important to note that Unicef, like most humanitarian organizations, serve in countries at the pleasure of the host government. Humanitarian aid is based on the principle that people need not starve to death or lack basic medical care just because they are citizens of an odious regime. Humanitarian organizations are therefore loathe to jeopardize their access to vulnerable populations by condemning host governments. So when Rosett beseeches Unicef to say, instead, that North Korea "faces potential food crisis due to murderous, wasteful, degrading, abusive tyranny of Kim Jong Il's regime," she is basically asking Unicef to sign its own eviction notice, North Korea's starving children be damned.
In his guest slot on the New York Times columnist page (subscription req.), Robert Wright flips the conventional wisdom on the Security Council's rejection of a force authorization resolution for the American led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
A sacred duty of bodies that authorize things--the Security Council, Congress, zoning boards--is to sometimes not authorize things. (Imagine a world where everything was authorized!) People who want a thing authorized sometimes call the failure to authorize it "gridlock." People who don't want the thing authorized prefer to say "the system worked," and refer to people who complain about gridlock as "whiners." Who is right?History can judge who was "right" about the wisdom of invading Iraq in the spring of 2003. For now, I think it's instructive to look at how a core group of pro-Iraq war pundits and editorialists (whom we may call "whiners") tried to inflict damage on the public's opinion of the United Nations when the Security Council refused to authorize the war.
In January, Dispatch reported on inflated allegations that United Nations Development Program funds were being converted widely into hard currency to the benefit of the North Korean government. In response to these allegations UNDP moved swiftly, responsibly, and comprehensively to review the concerns expressed by member states. Ultimately, these efforts led to the suspension of certain operations in North Korea.
UNDP's handling of the situation has been widely praised, but that hasn't stopped some from reraking the muck in an attempt to discredit the agency.