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UNESCO report offends social mores of anti-gay group

Fox News is scandal mongering a June UNESCO report titled International Guidelines on Sexuality Education: an evidence informed approach to effective sex, relationships, and HIV/STI Education.   The report is apparently offensive to social conservatives for a number of reasons, but Fox is highlighting the fact that it encourages educators to broach the topic of masturbation with 5-to-8 year-old children.  Specifically, the report says:

Learning Objectives for Level I (5-8).  Explain the concept of private parts of the body. Key Ideas:

Most children are curious about their bodies

It is natural to explore and touch parts of one's own body

Bodies can feel good when touched

Touching and rubbing one's genitals is called masturbation

Some people masturbate and some do not

Masturbation is not harmful, but should be done in private

This catches the ire of one Michelle Turner of "Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum." This is a Maryland, USA based group that believes a "responsible curriculum" includes teaching that homosexuality can be "cured."  In the Fox News report, Turner says, "At that age they should be learning about ... the proper name of certain parts of their bodies, certainly not about masturbation."    Fortunately, Turner's curriculum advice was ignored for this report. 

Another day, another ridiculous John Bolton op-ed

In The Wall Street Journal today, John Bolton -- the "Glenn Beck of foreign policy," in Dan Drezner's words -- demonstrates once again his uncanny ability to pen ludicrous partisan blindsides and convince major editorial boards to give him the spotlight.  His targets this time include former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, the older (and vastly distorted) demon of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism ("Durban I" in conservatives' no-holds-barred teleology), and, naturally, the entire UN itself.

Mark, citing Matt Yglesias, has already capably dismissed the alleged "furor" over President Obama's decision to award Robinson a Presidential Medal of Freedom (a thought: leave it to self-avowed freedom-fighting neoconservatives like Bolton to invest such a symbolic honor with such life or death significance).  As human rights commissioner, Robinson's job was to criticize abuses of human rights.  Some of these occurred in one of the UN's 192 member states that is particularly sensitive to criticism: Israel.  This meant that Mary Robinson on occasion criticized certain policies of the Israeli government.  In the blinkered view of rabid pro-Israel hawks like Bolton, this means no less than that Mary Robinson was unabashedly anti-Israel -- no ifs, ands, or buts. (Marty Peretz, unsurprisingly, goes even further off the deep end, disgustingly calling her "a real bigot."  Bolton relegates his ad hominem attacks to deriding her "ceremonial" position as first female president of Ireland.)

This is, quite bluntly, utter hogwash, as intellectually dishonest as it is factually untrue and insulting.  Bolton's criticism of Robinson for her role in the Durban conference fares little better.  As High Commissioner for Human Rights, one of Robinson's responsibilities was to chair the Durban anti-racism conference.  She bears no more responsibility for the inexcusably anti-Semitic or anti-Israel antics that did occur there than does Colin Powell, who led the U.S. walkout that Bolton so admiringly cites.  In lampooning Robinson's characterization of the conference's outcome as "remarkably good," Bolton nowhere recognizes the reality that the overwhelming majority of the Durban outcome document had nothing to do with Israel.  While NGOs did produce an unrelated document (which Bolton misleadingly conflates with the official one) that was indeed deeply offensive to Israel, Bolton does he mention the fact that Robinson refused to even touch this loathsome piece of juvenalia.

One of Bolton's objections to Mary Robinson receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom is -- I kid you not -- that she once uttered the words "civilian casualties are human rights victims."  When a former high-ranking U.S. official is boisterously claiming that protecting human rights undermine national security, the extent of his fall (and of the country's rise) is all too apparent.

When the going gets tough, editorial boards turn to John Bolton

If you feel like you have been reading a lot of John Bolton recently, it's because you have. A Nexis search reveals that over the past 12 weeks,  John Bolton has been published on the op-ed page of a major American publication nine times.  That's three times in the Washington Post, once in the New York Times, once in The Los Angeles Times, twice in the Wall Street Journal and three in the Washington Times.  This is an average of just under one op-ed a week, per week, for the last three months.  

To be sure, out of the mainstream views like Bolton's ought to have a place in our national debate. But it does sure seem that editorial boards instinctively turn to him time and time again for North Korea and Iran commentary.   

On L’affaire Mary Robinson

Matt Yglesias nails it:

My sense is that what’s really going on here is the same as what’s happening with pro-Israel groups’ years-long campaign against Human Rights Watch. It’s simply not possible to do a credible job of international human rights monitoring without criticizing Israeli behavior now and again. Exercising sovereign authority over the lives of millions of stateless persons is a human rights fiasco waiting to happen. But a lot of Jewish organizations in the United States seem to take the view that because Israel’s human rights record is better than, say, Sudan’s (and it sure is better) that any criticism of Israel amounts to anti-Israel bias.

An illegitimate criticism of R2P

In a short post, Bill Easterly and Laura Freschi air some concerns over the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) that have been leveled by Noam Chomsky and General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann. 

Chomsky and D’Escoto both conclude that, in practice, R2P is just Great Power imperialism in disguise. Although a lot of other statements by these two are nuts, this conclusion is not completely crazy. After all, any intervention has to be approved by the Great Powers that sit on the UN Security Council.

Not for nothing, but "in practice" R2P has never been applied.  The responsibilty to protect is a legal term agreed upon by UN  member states in 2005.  It provides the Security Council a legal endrun around traditional arguments of state sovereignty in cases where a country is unwilling or unable to prevent mass atrocities from being visited upon its citizens.  Since 2005, however, the Council has yet to invoke R2P to authorize intervention. 

Talk to me about "imperialism" when that happens --  if it ever does. 

John Bolton passes through the revolving door

Here in Washington, the term "revolving door" refers to the phenomenon of former government officials taking up private sector posititions to lobby their former colleagues for lucrative government contracts.   This is very common and afflicts both parties with equal opportunity.  Indeed, even the most committed and die-hard ideologues are not immune from the pressure to cash out and draw on the contacts they have made in years of government service.  For instance, one John R. Bolton has joined the board of EMS Technologies, a firm that describes itself as "a leading provider of wireless connectivity solutions over satellite and terrestrial networks." 

In a release earlier this month, EMS touted a new effort to boost government sales. 

No night of the long anti-R2P knives

As Emily reported yesterday, the President of the General Assembly convened a panel discussion yesterday that wasn't exactly friendly toward the Responsibility to Protect. This was, as I explained earlier, part of an unfortunate PGA power play (no, that's not a mixed sports metaphor) to back off from R2P. But to hear The Economist tell it, it was practically an anti-R2P putsch.

Contrary to The Economist's salacious wording, I don't think it's worth affording this week's discussions the gravity of a "campaign to sabotage R2P." Nor did it occur "in defiance of Ban Ki-moon," who gave his remarks a couple days before the actual debate, making the savvy argument to not replace the "substance" of R2P with the "rancor" of politically fraught debate.

There are critics of R2P, to be sure, some legitimate, but many brandishing misconstructions of the doctrine as a sort of handy fig leaf for neocolonialism. What they are brandishing, however, are the sharpened "knives" with with The Economist claims certain governments are attempting to "unravel" R2P. The responsibility to protect is not going to collapse because of this week's discussion, past Security Council resolutions are not going to "un-invoke" R2P, and, hopefully, the debate will progress to the level of how best to prevent mass atrocities and protect civilian populations.

UN employee killed in Pakistan

Another tragic example of the dangers that UN personnel face:

The attack on the U.N. worker took place early Thursday at the Kacha Garhi camp near Peshawar. Local police chief Ghayoor Afridi said the assailants tried to abduct the U.N. official and opened fire when he resisted.

The chief of the U.N. refugee agency in Pakistan, Guenet Guebre-Christos, identified the dead U.N. worker as Zill-e-Usman, a 59-year-old Pakistani in charge of the U.N.'s relief efforts at the camp. She said Usman had worked for the U.N. for nearly 30 years and was set to retire soon.

"He was quite an old hand and he was looking forward to his retirement," Guebre-Christos told The Associated Press. She strongly condemned the attack, calling it a "cowardly assassination."

This UN worker was one of many trying to help the two million Pakistani civilians that have been displaced. Trying to abduct him -- and hinder the protection and resettlement of fellow Pakistanis in the process -- was indeed cowardly, as well as foolish, egotistical, and vile.

The report also notes the arrival of the UN team, led by Chilean ambassador Heraldo Munoz, tasked with investigating another cowardly assassination in the country: that of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.