02 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
02 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
In this way, unpaid interns are like illegal immigrants. They create an oversupply of people willing to work for low wages, or in the case of interns, literally nothing. Moreover, a recent survey by Britain's National Union of Journalists found that an influx of unpaid graduates kept wages down and patched up the gaps left by job cuts.
There may be more subtle effects as well. In an information economy, productivity is based on the best people finding the jobs best suited for their talents, and interns interfere with this cultural capitalism. They fly in the face of meritocracy — you must be rich enough to work without pay to get your foot in the door. And they enhance the power of social connections over ability to match people with desirable careers. A 2004 study of business graduates at a large mid-Atlantic university found that the completion of an internship helped people find jobs faster but didn't increase their confidence that those jobs were a good fit.
Although the conclusion makes sense and somewhat undercuts the rest of the moanA 1998 survey of nearly 700 employers by the Institute on Education and the Economy at Columbia University's Teachers College found: "Compared to unpaid internships, paid placements are strongest on all measures of internship quality. The quality measures are also higher for those firms who intend to hire their interns." This shouldn't be too surprising — getting hired and getting paid are what work, in the real world, is all about.
Majikthise now has a follow up post with a series of links mostly rebutting the underlying premises of the editorial. As a free marketeer I have read the lot with amazement.The fact that so many progressive organizations rely on unpaid interns is especially troubling. These organizations should embrace a living wage for interns and entry-level staffers as a matter of principle.
First off, it's hypocritical for progressive groups to preach social change but practice exclusion. Moreover, elitist recruiting strategies are short-sighted if your goal is helping the disadvantaged. What percentage of people who write white papers on the welfare system have ever been on welfare? I'm not saying that you need personal experience in order to write policy. However, fresh ideas and diverse perspectives are the lifeblood of progressive policy and alternative media. So, progressive groups have a strong long-term incentive to recruit from a broad cross-section of society.
It's easy to say that a non-profit can't afford to pay its interns. Money will always be tight, but that fact of life never absolves decision-makers of responsibility for setting priorities. Progressive organizations should embrace living wages for interns and entry-level staff a goal, for their own good.
I agree with the whole of this and I hate the hypocrisy of it; "Progressive" non-profits who offer unpaid internships are in fact exploiting their workers in precisely the way that they get upset about when evil capitalists do the same thing. If anyone wonders why many of the downtrodden seem to prefer "non-progressive" alternatives such as local churches then this could well be why. It is very hard to identify the real problems of the downtrodden if you have never had to struggle.02 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
02 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
The humorist P. J. O’Rourke famously said, “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” That cynical, libertarian sentiment felt out of step after 9/11, when Washington seemed set to embark on a period of high seriousness of purpose. Nearly five years later, however, it’s clear that even homeland-security funding is dangerous in the hands of Washington lawmakers.
The Department of Homeland Security has just announced this year’s urban counterterrorism grants. The department was working on the basis of a new funding formula that replaced the old congressionally mandated formula that had more to do with pork-barrel, spread-the-money considerations than sober assessments of risk. But the new formula apparently is even stupider than the old, since it has dictated enormous cuts for the only two cities ever to be hit by Islamic terrorists, Washington, D.C., and New York City.
You know he almost sounds like a left winger - here's Majithise:So what does it take to be included in the DHS's Freedom Budget?
Here are some of the distinguished heritage sites:
The whole procedure, really, was flawed. Rather than have experts in counterterrorism review the proposals, DHS used a “peer review” system that came to the conclusion that New York had no national monuments or icons.
Funny, I seem to recall that there’s a big statute out in the harbor. And a bridge that’s been sold many times. And a readily-identifiable theater district, and several skyscrapers of some reknown. *
Not surprisingly, it appears that politics and palm-greasing may have had something to do with things.
The major difference between Rich and the left-wing ladies* is that he blames Congress and dumb bureacrats for the pork and waste while the ladies tend to blame the occupant of the white-house. Personally I think there is plenty of blame to spread around here and plenty of bureaucrats, congresscritters and presidential appointees who should be on the receiving end. Hence I have to say that I think both ladies would tend to agree with most of Rich's conclusion too:After a surge in such confidence following 9/11, the Iraq war, and the spectacle of the Abramoff-tainted, listless GOP, Congress is writing a new chapter in the history of cynicism about government. Everywhere you look there is more reason to shake your head and wonder, Where is the adult supervision in Washington? Here is the congressional leadership strenuously objecting to the FBI searching a corrupt, cash-grubbing congressman’s office. There is the Department of Veterans Affairs losing the personal information of millions of veterans.
Conservatives are supposed to believe in a government that does less rather than more, and that performs its core functions well. Republicans have stumbled on both counts, delivering bloated and incompetent governance. Their political strategy is to hope Democrats get tainted too by their mere presence in Washington. But Republicans should be worried lest voters confiscate their whiskey and car keys.
All the rumbling about third party candidates is looking more and more plausible.02 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
According to their website the publisher of the magazine Shock (HFM U.S.) is a subsidiary of Hachette Filipacchi Médias S.A and
Hachette Filipacchi Médias S.A. (HFM), based in France and a subsidiary of Lagardère SCA, (www.lagardere.com) is the world's largest magazine publisher present in 39 countries. [...] In the United States, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc. (wholly owned) is one of the largest magazine publishers. [...]
Groupe Hachette Filipacchi Photos (GHFP) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hachette Filipacchi Medias and houses the Group's acquisitions in the field of photography, a core business for magazine publishers. A new head office was created in early 2005, joining French teams of Hachette Photos Presse (Gamma), Hachette Photos Illustration (Hoa-Qui), Rapho and Keystone, while the www.hachettephotos.com portal now presents the Group's complete offer online. Over one million digital images of current events, high-profile personalities, news reportage and celebrity portraits are available to the Group's press, publishing, corporate and advertising clients.
The circumstances captured in that image, including the key fact that I had taken the photograph, were easily ascertainable. In fact, I don’t know how any professional photo agency or magazine could reasonably claim to not know that it was my photograph, that it was taken immediately after an insurgent car bomber attacked the children, and that I had just emerged from a protracted dispute with the Army in order to protect the copyright. The reason I assert that the team behind SHOCK knew all this and still acted with clear intent is found on the inside cover of the issue.
There, along with the Table of Contents, is a photograph of me, holding a framed copy of the photograph in question. That photograph was taken to accompany an article by Mitch Stacey for the Associated Press. The caption reads:
In this case the photographer, Michael Yon, is understandably pissed and suing the publisher for what looks like blatent intentional copyright infringement, yet it seems the owners of Shock, rather than do the decent thing prefer to sue him for "defamation" a rather odd concept since their abuse of his image would seem to be defaming him, his subject and his views.Picture This: Amateur photographer Michael Yon captured history when he snagged our cover shot while reporting on the war for his blog. Could you be our next cover photographer? Send pics!
HFM [...] intimated in writing that they may have a claim against me for defamation based on the complaints they received from third parties about their unauthorized use of my photo. My attorney, John Mason, began taking the necessary legal steps in this fight, and for the first few days of the dispute, I remained silent apart from the one statement published on my website, out of respect for the process of law.
I have no connection with Michael Yon what so ever - I may have donated to his paypal fund once but I regret to say I have probably been to cheap to so do - so anything I say has nothing whatever to do with Mr Yon. However going on the description above (and more detail in the full posts at Mr Yon's blog) and coverage at numerous blogs etc. I have no hesitation in describing HFM as a bunch of hypocrital scumbags who seem to think they can get away with bullying the small guy. Their behaviour seems ot me to be well illustrated by the series of photos that comes up first when you search hachette photos for "thief".05 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Recently, I have tried to break out of my wine rut. My husband and I vacationed on the French island of St. Bartelemy, enjoying delectable food and warm sunshine. There was only one problem with our otherwise perfect holiday in paradise. There was not a single bottle of California-style chardonnay to be had at any price.
Oh, we tried. The chardonnay grape is the basis for many famous French labels such as Chablis, Pouilly-Fuisse, and Montrachet. We tried many an expensive bottle to try to feed our nasty habit, to no avail. Each one of them to our palates seemed watery, or acidic, or too tart. One afternoon, we even set off on a desperate mission to a huge warehouse literally stacked floor to ceiling with wine. The nice French lady who helped me seemed dumbfounded when I asked if they had any California wine among the thousands of bottles surrounding us. “But….thees is a French island!” she asked, bewildered.
Yes, I patiently, explained, but in the U.S. wine sellers usually offer wine from all over the world to their customers, not just U.S. wines. No, she was sorry, but only French wines were sold on a French island, and seemed honestly confused as to why I would want anything else. Later, when I explained to the proprietor of one of the island’s finest restaurants about my inexplicable craving for California (or Australian—they do it well too) chardonnay, he offered his sincere condolences. We decided to stick to pina coladas and beer for the rest of the trip.
The protectionism and chauvinism of the French wine industry is staggering. They just about admit that the Italians can do something with grapes and, if threatened by a panzer regiment, will agree that the Germans make adequate wines in the Alsatian mode but that is about it. However things are getting better. Here on the Riviera however I have seen a steady increase in the "Vins Etrangers" section of the supermarket with Californian, Australian and South American wines on offer, at in most cases, decent prices. Admittedly the Californian wine section seems to be dominated by "Turning Leaf" which is some sort of industrially produced plonk, but at least it's there and offering the chsrdonnay'n'oak combo the NRO writer pines (oaks?) for. Also what I assume is the Chilean (or was it Argentinian?) equivalent of "Turning Leaf" that I found recently - "Gato Negro" - produced an excellent Cabernet/Merlot that was both eminently drinkable and priced right at the €4/bottle sweet spot where I find most of my wine. Allegedly (I cannot speak from experience being, as noted, a cheapskate when it comes to buying wines) many of the dedicated wine sellers have decent selections of better vintages of New World wines too so if you are desperate for a non-French wine you have plenty of options.IF there's a problem with France, it is that the food is often entirely too "French." Offerings like crepes, coq au vin and cassoulet are so common that there is a danger of forgetting that they all have actual regions of origin and are not national dishes.
This danger is omnipresent in Nice, where 80 percent of the restaurants cater to 90 percent of the tourists by offering mostly "French" food, ignoring the well-defined, well-maintained, universally revered and quite wonderful cuisine of Provence. In Nice this cuisine is even more local, and it would be a shame to visit this old and quintessential Mediterranean city without indulging in cuisine Nissarde, to use the preferred indigenous word.
Nice wasn't even part of France before the mid 19th century, its local dialect is distinctively different to Provençal (no final Ns pronounced NG for example) and the cuisine is significantly different from that found in the ports of the Var - think bouillabaisse - let alone the non-maritime heartlands of Provence. Still aside from "pendantic" quibbles over terminology I thought the NYT article to be most excellent and I have noted the names to be visited sometime later in the year when the tourists have quit.05 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
At the risk of seriously over-generalizing, it really does seem at times that Western expats in Japan are, by-and-large, much more “into” their host nation than are Western expats in Korea. Much of it, I’d have to assume, is political—it’s been hard, at least as an American, to line up behind the Roh administration and the ruling Uri Party, especially on key foreign policy issues like North Korea and the Korea-U.S. alliance. I could certainly see how Westerners, or at least Americans of a conservative bend, might find Koizumi’s vision much more palatable.
But there’s more to it than politics. Are expat forums in Japan full of the same kind of non-stop bitching about the host nation’s society and culture as they are in Korea? Do you see the same kind of derision leveled at J-pop and J-dramas as you see leveled at K-pop and K-dramas? I, for one, don’t see it. If anything, I’m impressed by the number of Westerners who are willing to serve almost as honorary ambassadors for Japan, promoting Japanese arts and culture in their homelands. Japan—it’s cool. It’s got anime. And cute little trees. And beautiful gardens. Korea? It’s got ugly cities. Populated by girly men and rude, xenophobic ajeossi’s. Who drink a lot. And puke on the sidewalks. And beat their wives when they come home from the red-light district. But at least its got beautiful women.
The first thing to say is that Japan is not perfect. It isn't all anime and cute little trees etc. etc. I think every expat who lives there has a few nasty experiences such as witnessing (or if female being the victim of) perverts on trains, being told "Gaijin Dame!" etc. and anyone with eyes to see will see the nasty underside of Japan where ever they look. There are plenty of "pavement okonomiyaki" to be found in places where the drunk salaryman stagger home, there are a heck of a lot of homeless people (all those blue shacks on the river banks and in parks), and Japanese TV is as "quirky" as it comes.06 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
06 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
SÉGOLÈNE ROYAL, the leftwing favourite for the next French presidency, outraged fellow Socialists for the second time in a week yesterday by attacking the 35-hour working week, the main legacy of the party’s last term in office.
The 35-hour week had the “unintended consequence of worsening the situation for the most vulnerable workers, notably for women with few qualifications” who now had less time to spend with their families, she said. Mme Royal’s criticism of the sacrosanct 1999 working time law followed her call last week for military training for delinquent teenagers from the housing estates and boot camps for their parents.
Eursoc astutely notes that while this may well be causing the socialists a certain amount of grief, it is also well and truly upsetting Sarko and Le Pen because she is busily "stealing" their policies. This is not exactly a new or original observation, I linked to the Delize cartoon below in April and it still sums up the situation beautifully.06 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
07 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
I am satisfied that Hachette Filipacchi Media believed they were acting in good faith when procuring the publishing rights from Polaris to use my photograph in SHOCK magazine. Both sides worked to find a solution, and, as a result of our discussions, Hachette Filipacchi Media agreed to pay a licensing fee, and to make a very generous contribution to Fisher House.
That is the good news and means that I have updated my post about HFM from last week to note that HFM do apparently respect other people's copyright. Of course one can wonder whether HFM would have cared if it hadn't been for all the publicity and blog posts from people such as I and on that note I find it fascinating that my blog post is number 1 on Google Finance's HFM page (see below) and that number 2 comes from another Yon fan/HFM critic who also notes that HFM's parent company Lagardère had some interesting relations with the former Iraqi government.07 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
RANCHO SANTA FE, Calif. - Democrats in a solidly Republican district hoped to capitalize on a GOP corruption scandal and capture the House seat Tuesday that was held by Randy "Duke" Cunningham before he went to prison for bribery.
Democrat Francine Busby, a local school board member who ran against Cunningham in 2004, competed against Republican Brian Bilbray, a former congressman, in a race that was considered a toss-up in its closing days.
unfortunately, as predicted by Dafydd at Big Lizards, it looks like this is "win" in the sense of coming second in a two horse race, as AP now reports that:By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer 6 minutes ago
A former Republican congressman narrowly beat his Democratic rival early Wednesday for the right to fill the House seat once held by imprisoned Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a race closely watched as a possible early barometer of next fall's vote.
Republican Brian Bilbray emerged victorious after a costly and contentious race against Democrat Francine Busby, a local school board member who ran against Cunningham in 2004. [...] The race — one of dozens of election contests in eight states — was viewed by Democrats as an opportunity to capture a solidly Republican district and build momentum on their hopes to capture control of the House.
One of the interesting points here is that the AP repeatedly reports that a lot of money was spent and hints that the loss was due to the expenditure and another is the way that for democrats "close" apparently counts as "win" - in other words getting their excuses in early - as the initial article explains:Democrats spent nearly $2 million on the high-stakes contest, and the GOP spent more than $4 million. President Bush and first lady Laura Bush recorded automated telephone messages for Bilbray. A mass e-mailing from Sen. John Kerry, the party's 2004 presidential candidate, was sent last week to more than 100,000 supporters, urging them to help get out the vote.
Al Gore also recorded a phone message telling Democrats to go to the polls.
Cunningham's downfall threatened to upset the electoral balance in this longtime GOP stronghold, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 3-to-2. Cunningham pleaded guilty last year to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and was sentenced in March to more than eight years in prison.
Well before Election Day, some Democrats claimed victory just by forcing a fight for the seat.
"If I get close, then we've made the point that this is no longer a safe seat, but it's not enough," Busby said in a recent interview. "We want to win."
and of course there is the lovely unbiased discussion about the illegal immigation issue where the AP can't help getting in a snide dig at the republican and defending the democrat:Busby said repeatedly that she misspoke [ed:about illegal immigrants voting]. She said she had been trying to encourage underage high school students or people who were not registered — but are in the country legally — to participate in the political process.
Bilbray called for constructing a fence "from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico" and barring illegal immigrants from collecting Social Security benefits. His Web site does not oppose a guest-worker program and offers no plan for treatment of the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants currently in the country.
07 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
07 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
The speech reflected frustration in Mr. Annan's office with a looming crisis over the United Nations budget, which, under a six-month gap agreed to under pressure from Washington in December, will pay the bills only until the end of June.
The deal was struck to link budget approval with achievement of significant management reforms, and Mr. Bolton made frequent mention of Congressional impatience with the United Nations and legislation that would authorize Washington to start withholding its dues. The United States is the largest contributor to the United Nations, paying 22 percent of its budget.
"In recent years the enormously divisive issue of Iraq and the big stick of financial withholding have come to define an unhappy marriage," Mr. Malloch Brown said.
He noted that the the United Nations was fielding 18 peacekeeping operations abroad at lower cost and higher effectiveness than "comparable U.S. operations." Yet, he said, that fact has been ignored or underplayed by policy makers and opinion shapers in Washington.
Firstly let us look at the budget and governance issue. Even ignoring the Oil for Food scam, the UN is well known for budgetary waste and for the peculiar idea that all governments are equal so that we see countries like Saudi Arabia or Sudan on Human Rights panels and Iran on disarmament ones. I don't say that America is perfect but it seems entitled to require better accounting when the UN does things like propose to renovate its HQ for the price of an entirely new building and reform of an institution that seems to prefer secrecy wherever possible sounds like a good goal too.07 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Following is the address by United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown on “Power and Super-Power: Global Leadership in the Twenty-First Century” at the Century Foundation and Center for American Progress -- Security and Peace Initiative, in New York, 6 June:
Thank you for allowing me to speak to you today on Power and Global Leadership. I often get asked to talk about leadership, but rarely about power. I wonder why.
Yeah I wonder about that too. You don't demonstrate much leadership beyond leading the charge to the next 5* hotel and you don't have much power and what power you have seems to be mostly wastedWith that thought as my starting point, I am going to give what might be regarded as a rather un-UN speech. Some of the themes -- that the United Nations is misunderstood and does much more than its critics allow -- are probably not surprising. But my underlying message, which is a warning about the serious consequences of a decades-long tendency by US Administrations of both parties to engage only fitfully with the UN, is not one a sitting United Nations official would normally make to an audience like this.
I always like to agree with my fiskee at the beginning and I'm happy to do so here. Fitfull engagement in the UN by the US has indeed been a mistake. A more hands on US engagement might have nipped many of the UN's bigger problems in the bud and a total disengagement would definitely have done so since the institution would have gone bust.But I feel it is a message that urgently needs to be aired. And as someone who has spent most of his adult life in this country, only a part of it at the UN, I hope you will take it in the spirit in which it is meant: as a sincere and constructive critique of US policy towards the UN by a friend and admirer. Because the fact is that the prevailing practice of seeking to use the UN almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable. You will lose the UN one way or another.
The fact the US administrations of all stripes have, for decades, failed to stand up for it against domestic critics could possibly be because US administrations have found the UN to be indefensible. The fact that they still try to use the UN now and again is surely a sign of pragmatism in that the tool exists so you might as well try and use it.Multilateral compromise has always been difficult to justify in the American political debate: too many speeches, too many constraints, too few results. Yet it was not meant to be so.
The all-moral-idealism-no-power institution was the League of Nations. The UN was explicitly designed through US leadership and the ultimate coalition of the willing, its World War II allies, as a very different creature, an antidote to the League’s failure. At the UN’s core was to be an enforceable concept of collective security protected by the victors of that war, combined with much more practical efforts to promote global values such as human rights and democracy.
And in certain respects such as the failure to judge governments by their behaviour towards their own populations the UN has been no better than its predecessor. The additional fact that almost no resolution has ever been enforced without US participation and that the UN's defense of human rights and democracy has been abysmal don't help. Indeed the latter is one reason why Americans dislike the UN, if the UN were serious about the promotion of human rights and democracy why does it get upset when Americans complain about non-democratic human rights abusers being in charge of committees on Human Rights etc.?Underpinning this new approach was a judgement that no President since Truman has felt able to repeat: that for the world’s one super-Power -- arguably more super in 1946 than 2006 -- managing global security and development issues through the network of a United Nations was worth the effort. Yes it meant the give and take of multilateral bargaining, but any dilution of American positions was more than made up for by the added clout of action that enjoyed global support.
Which is clearly why the UN has intervened so effectively in Darfur, Rwanda... Except in extraordinarily rare cases (Iraq 1991, Haiti) the UN has failed to support any US position that has not been watered down to practically homeopathic levels.Today, we are coming to the end of the 10-year term of arguably the UN’s best-ever Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. But some of his very successes -- promoting human rights and a responsibility to protect people from abuse by their own Governments; creating a new status for civil society and business at the UN -- are either not recognized or have come under steady attacks from anti-UN groups.
Best ever? true recent competition has been poor so that may be true. But it isn't something to be proud about. The "best-ever Secretary-General" has overseen the UN run "oil for food program", possibly the largest piece of corruption ever with billions squanders in bribes and kickbacks, amongst other things. The fact that only recently the UN has seemed to think that there is a responsibility to protect people from their own government is surely a sign of how bankrupt it is as an organization. And it takes a good deal of chutzpah to take credit for that fact since it took some combination of Clinton, Blair and Bush (with their various ministers) to make this point and it has yet to be adopted by many member states including influential ones like China. For some reason the "best-ever Secretary-General" has failed to try and get member states who disagree with that position removed from the UN.To take just one example, 10 years ago UN peacekeeping seemed almost moribund in the aftermath of tragic mistakes in Rwanda, Somalia and Yugoslavia. Today, the UN fields 18 peacekeeping operations around the world, from the Congo to Haiti, Sudan to Sierra Leone, Southern Lebanon to Liberia, with an annual cost that is at a bargain bin price compared to other US-led operations. And the US pays roughly one quarter of those UN peacekeeping costs -- just over $1 billion this year.
That figure should be seen in the context of estimates by both the GAO and RAND Corporation that UN peacekeeping, while lacking heavy armament enforcement capacity, helps to maintain peace -- when there is a peace to keep -- more effectively for a lot less than comparable US operations. Multilateral peacekeeping is effective cost-sharing on a much lower cost business model and it works.
One suspects that there is a certain amount of comparing apples with oranges in this. And the "bargain bin" cost results in bargain bin results. The fact that mercenary companies have suggested that they could provide better services at a fraction of the cost for most UN missions indicates that bargain bin price may not be quite as low cost as Mr Malloch Brown suggests - if that $1 billion/year were handed over to the mercenaries it might well go a lot further and be a lot more effective in keeping the peace in places where there isn't any peace at the moment as well as where there is.That is as it should be and is true for many other areas the UN system works in, too, from humanitarian relief to health to education. Yet for many policymakers and opinion leaders in Washington, let alone the general public, the roles I have described are hardly believed or, where they are, remain discreetly underplayed. To acknowledge an America reliant on international institutions is not perceived to be good politics at home.
The 2004/5 Tsunami demonstrated clearly the limits of UN humanitarian aid - slow and bureaucratic seems to be the kindest verdict. I do agree that some UN bodies such as the WHO do seem to have done a mostly good job - although the SARS epidemic showed that they require cooperation from member states and are of limited help to non.member states such as Taiwan - but I suggest that their success is in spite of the UN's bureaucratic culture rather than anything that the UN and particularly the secretary general can point to being caused by them.However, inevitably a moment of truth is coming. Because even as the world’s challenges are growing, the UN’s ability to respond is being weakened without US leadership.
Take the issue of human rights.
When Eleanor Roosevelt took the podium at the UN to argue passionately for the elaboration of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the world responded. Today, when the human rights machinery was renewed with the formation of a Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Commission on Human Rights, and the US chose to stay on the sidelines, the loss was everybody’s.
It would help if the UN failed to keep kowtowing to states that repeatedly abuse the human rights of their citizens. Maybe the UN could have read reports by its own staff or by NGOs such as Amnesty or HRW and noted that states that were on the bottom of those lists should be forbidden from sitting on the Human Rights Council. The fact that in many cases it was NGOs and the US government that stopped many of the more egrgious abusers from standing for election is not a ringing endorsement of the new council. Just possibly the US was right to stay on the sidelines and criticise instead of giving a body of human rights abusers their tacit approval by participating.I hope and believe the new Council will prove itself to be a stronger and more effective body than its predecessor. But there is no question that the US decision to call for a vote in order to oppose it in the General Assembly, and then to not run for a seat after it was approved by 170 votes to 4, makes the challenge more difficult.
Well it couldn't be worse than its predecessor.but as with the "best-ever Secretary-General" the bar has been set very low.More broadly, Americans complain about the UN’s bureaucracy, weak decision-making, the lack of accountable modern management structures and the political divisions of the General Assembly here in New York. And my response is, “guilty on all counts”.
And you seem happy with that?But why?
In significant part because the US has not stuck with its project -- its professed wish to have a strong, effective United Nations -- in a systematic way. Secretary Albright and others here today have played extraordinary leadership roles in US-UN relations, for which I salute them. But in the eyes of the rest of the world, US commitment tends to ebb much more than it flows. And in recent years, the enormously divisive issue of Iraq and the big stick of financial withholding have come to define an unhappy marriage.
Just possibly the US sees itself as the abused spouse in this unhappy marriage. One doesn't want to be sexist here, but it seems to me that the UN has acted like the sort of stereotypical passive aggressive bitch of an unfaithful wife who seems to take everything and not give anything back in return, and who then screams hysterically when confronted with evidence of her infidelity. Blaming the US for the fact that the UN is bureacratic, secretive and unaccountable is a bit like the wife complaining that her husband failed to stop her being a spoilt bitch.As someone who deals with Washington almost daily, I know this is unfair to the very real effort all three Secretaries of State I have worked with –- Secretary Albright, Secretary Powell and Secretary Rice -– put into UN issues. And today, on a very wide number of areas, from Lebanon and Afghanistan to Syria, Iran and the Palestinian issue, the US is constructively engaged with the UN. But that is not well known or understood, in part because much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. That is what I mean by “stealth” diplomacy: the UN’s role is in effect a secret in Middle America even as it is highlighted in the Middle East and other parts of the world.
It might help if the UN were able to demonstrate actual results and value for money instead of taking refuge in duck-billed platitudes.Exacerbating matters is the widely held perception, even among many US allies, that the US tends to hold on to maximalist positions when it could be finding middle ground.
So the fact that the US has principles is a problem? Right its all America's fault for insisting that other countries not be two-faced scumbags.We can see this even on apparently non-controversial issues such as renovating the dilapidated UN Headquarters in New York. While an architectural landmark, the building falls dangerously short of city codes, lacks sprinklers, is filled with asbestos and is in most respects the most hazardous workplace in town. But the only Government not fully supporting the project is the US. Too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping over too many years -- manifest in a fear by politicians to be seen to be supporting better premises for overpaid, corrupt UN bureaucrats -- makes even refurbishing a building a political hot potato.
That's because it has been priced at the sort of price that ought to result in a gleaming new gold-plated skyscraper. The fact that most other countries aren't complaining could have something to do with the fact they aren't expected to contribute to the cost. It's very easy to spend someone else's money.One consequence is that, like the building itself, the vital renewal of the Organization, the updating of its mission, its governance and its management tools, is addressed only intermittently. And when the US does champion the right issues like management reform, as it is currently doing, it provokes more suspicion than support.
Last December, for example, largely at US insistence, instead of a normal two-year budget, Member States approved only six months’ worth of expenditure -- a period which ends on June 30. Developing and developed countries, the latter with the US at the fore, are now at loggerheads over whether sufficient reform has taken place to lift that cap, or indeed whether there should be any links between reform and the budget. Without agreement, we could face a fiscal crisis very soon.
Something tells me that had the cap not been put in place there would have been even less reform. And soemthing tells me that this is what really bugs Malloch Brown. He hates being forced to do things and wondering whether he'll still be kept in the style to which he has becomed accustomed if he fails to deliver real reform. This could be the first time since his Tripos exam where he has actually been under pressure to deliver with no way to BS and misdirect and one suspects he's forgotten the tricks of the trade.There has been a significant amount of reform over the last 18 months, from the creation of a new Ethics Office and whistle-blower policy, to the establishment of a new Peacebuilding Commission and Human Rights Council. But not enough.
The unfinished management reform agenda, which the US sensibly supports, is in many ways a statement of the obvious. It argues that systems and processes designed 60 years ago for an organization largely devoted to running conferences and writing reports simply don’t work for today’s operational UN, which conducts multibillion-dollar peacekeeping missions, humanitarian relief operations and other complex operations all over the world. The report sets out concrete proposals for how this can be fixed while also seeking to address the broader management, oversight and accountability weaknesses highlighted by the “oil-for-food” programme.
The main management and oversight weaknesses that "oil-for-food" highlighted were in you and your boss Mr Annan. Blaming the Un founders of 60 years ago for your own incompetance seens a little rich.One day soon we must address the massive gap between the scale of world issues and the limits of the institutions we have built to address them. However, today even relatively modest proposals that in any other organization would be seen as uncontroversial, such as providing more authority and flexibility for the Secretary-General to shift posts and resources to organizational priorities without having to get direct approval from Member States, have been fiercely resisted by the G-77, the main group of developing countries, on the grounds that this weakens accountability. Hence the current deadlock.
What lies behind this?
It is not because most developing countries don’t want reform. To be sure, a few spoilers do seem to be opposed to reform for its own sake, and there is no question that some countries are seeking to manipulate the process for their own ends with very damaging consequences. But in practice, the vast majority is fully supportive of the principle of a better run, more effective UN; indeed they know they would be the primary beneficiaries, through more peace, and more development.
May I suggest that at least some of the problem is that many of the UN mambers, far more than the "few spoilers" actually don't believe they can lose and hence see no reason to compromise. It seems likely that that many nations are keen on dividing the cake so that they get the most from it and not in worrying about how the cake is financed nor whether their slice of the cake is a fair one. Oh and the fact that many of these countries are less than perfectly honest means that their leaders may be looking for ways that they can personally profit from the UN's largesse and have even less interest in "more peace and more development".So why has it not so far been possible to isolate the radicals and build a strong alliance of reform-minded nations to push through this agenda?
I would argue that the answer lies in questions about motives and power.
Motives, in that, very unfortunately, there is currently a perception among many otherwise quite moderate countries that anything the US supports must have a secret agenda aimed at either subordinating multilateral processes to Washington’s ends or weakening the institutions, and therefore, put crudely, should be opposed without any real discussion of whether they make sense or not.
And power, that in two different ways revolves around perceptions of the role and representativeness of the Security Council.
I'll be blunt and undiplomatic here. The biggest reason is that China and Russia have vetos and don't want reforms that might show them to be less than perfect countries. The fact that much of the "west" has been brainwashed by remenants of cold-war KGB campaigns into anti-americanism is surely a godsend to these countries and their allies.First, in that there has been a real, understandable hostility by the wider membership to the perception that the Security Council, in particular the five permanent members, is seeking a role in areas not formally within its remit, such as management issues or human rights.
The motives here are not quite as simple as you seem to suggest. Yeah it would be bad if human rights abusers like Russia and China got power here, but you know that you are being every so slightly disingenuous here, what most countries are really upset about is that their corrupt not terribly democratic countries should be subject to UN sanctioned criticism from their betters. Deep down inside everyone knows that the US (plus Europe, Japan etc) are in fact better - this is why people persist in taking chances to emigrate there - and that their own corrupt power elites would be very very embarassed if the full spotlight of inquiry were to shine in their direction. Hence they do whatever they can to stop it.Second, an equally understandable conviction that those five, veto-wielding permanent members who happen to be the victors in a war fought 60 years ago, cannot be seen as representative of today’s world -- even when looking through the lens of financial contributions. Indeed, the so-called G-4 of Security Council aspirants -- Japan, India, Brazil and Germany -- contribute twice as much as the P-4, the four permanent members excluding the U.S.
The G-4? I think the J-1 (Japan) or possibly the JG-2 are the contributors here and yes they do indeed contribute far more than the P-4 who are in three cases European imperial powers in decline and in the fourth case an Asian imperial power recovering from centuries of decline.Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged exactly this point on his trip to Washington last month, and it is something which does need to be addressed. More broadly, the very reasonable concerns of the full UN membership that the fundamental multilateral principle that each Member State’s vote counts equally in the wider work of the UN needs to be acknowledged and accommodated within a broader framework of reform. If the multilateral system is to work effectively, all States need to feel they have a real stake.
No the correct solution should be he who pays votes. Its simple and effective and it tends to lead to incentives for countries to contribute instead of becoming dependant on the charity of others.But a stake in what system?
The US -- like every nation, strong and weak alike -- is today beset by problems that defy national, inside-the-border solutions: climate change, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, migration, the management of the global economy, the internationalization of drugs and crime, the spread of diseases such as HIV and avian flu. Today’s new national security challenges basically thumb their noses at old notions of national sovereignty. Security has gone global, and no country can afford to neglect the global institutions needed to manage it.
Kofi Annan has proposed a restructuring of the UN to respond to these new challenges with three legs: development, security and human rights supported, like any good chair, by a fourth leg, reformed management. That is the UN we want to place our bet on. But for it to work, we need the US to support this agenda -- and support it not just in a whisper but in a coast to coast shout that pushes back the critics domestically and wins over the sceptics internationally. America’s leaders must again say the UN matters.
So Kofi and Mark, if you want US buy in you have to accept that the US is in fact the world's sole superpower, the largest UN contributor and the largest economy and hence, just as 60 years ago, the US should have a large role in deciding what to do. If you don't start engaging with the US and its politicians, if you continue disparaging them and their voters as sheep led by demagogues, then you really shouldn't be surprised if the US doesn't jump up and down with enthusiasm at whatever ideas you have.When you talk better national education scores, you don’t start with “I support the Department of Education”. Similarly for the UN it starts with politicians who will assert the US is going to engage with the world to tackle climate change, poverty, immigration and terrorism. Stand up for that agenda consistently and allow the UN to ride on its coat-tails as a vital means of getting it done. It also means a sustained inside-the-tent diplomacy at the UN. No more “take it or leave it”, red-line demands thrown in without debate and engagement.
Let me paraphrase: 'Because the real problem for us at the UN with "take it or leave it" is that we the UN can't afford to call your bluff and that is really really galling.'Let me close with a few words on Darfur to make my point.
A few weeks ago, my kids were on the Mall in Washington, demanding President Bush to do more to end the genocide in Darfur and President Bush wants to do more. I’d bet some of your kids were there as well. Perhaps you were, too. And yet what can the US do alone in the heart of Africa, in a region the size of France? A place where the Government in Khartoum is convinced the US wants to extend the hegemony it is thought to have asserted in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So how come the kids on the Mall weren't holding up signs asking Kofi Annan to do more? well I think we can answer that question. The kinds know perfectly well that Kofi Annan has no power and couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag. The only way Darfur will be fixed is for the US and possibly some allies to decide to ignore the sensibilites of the Sudanese government and their allies like the Chinese and intervene with or without the UN. We all know that in our hearts but if you are a UN bureaucrat it hurts to have to admit that so we don't and just claim that another 6 months of schmoozing with people in nie hotels will fix the problem instead of having actual enforcers on the ground.In essence, the US is stymied before it even passes “Go”. It needs the UN as a multilateral means to address Sudan’s concerns. It needs the UN to secure a wide multicultural array of troop and humanitarian partners. It needs the UN to provide the international legitimacy that Iraq has again proved is an indispensable component to success on the ground. Yet, the UN needs its first parent, the US, every bit as much if it is to deploy credibly in one of the world’s nastiest neighbourhoods.
What I just said. the UN is powerless and the Sudanese government is desperate to not be overthrown for its misgovernment of its nation and it has cut deals with enough other countries that it thinks it can BS the UN for ever. So far it has proven to be correct.Back in Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s day, building a strong, effective UN that could play this kind of role was a bipartisan enterprise, with the likes of Arthur Vandenberg and John Foster Dulles joining Democrats to support the new body. Who are their successors in American politics? Who will campaign in 2008 for a new multilateral national security?
It could well be that such a bipartisan approach will emerge but I don't think there is any certainty that it will end up supporting the sort of UN that employs you Mr Malloch Brown. What you want is a bunch of people to agree to keep on fundnig your lifestyle while you fail to deliver and I suspect that - give the reaction in the US to corruption and pork in Washington - that the chances of US voters supporting a UN apparently filled with corruption and pork is low to non-existant. If the UN becomes an issue in the US elections the spotlight that wll be shone on it will be illiminuating but what it is likely to expose is not going to be pleasant.08 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
His death does not mean either the Islamist al-Qaeda elements or nationalist fighters will give up, says the BBC News website's world affairs correspondent, Paul Reynolds.
Indeed his removal might well bring about an explosion of revenge by his followers, he adds.
So let me get this straight, according to the BBC there could be zillions of Zarqawi followers who will kill indiscriminately in revenge for his death in ways that they haven't been doing up to now? It is only near the bottom that we get a hint that just maybe Iraqis weren't madly enamoured with the Zarqman and his Al Qaida:Mr Maliki said intelligence from Iraqi people had helped track down Zarqawi, who had a $25m price on his head - the same bounty as that offered by the US for al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
"What happened today is a result of co-operation for which we have been asking from our masses and the citizens of our country," he said.
How many other news sites will make the same spin I wonder?08 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Arab and Western security analysts were agreed on Thursday that Zarqawi's death in a U.S. air raid would not end the insurgency, even if it represents a rare triumph in Iraq for the Bush administration.
"There will be people that will be mobilized to join the caravan of martyrs, to emulate his example and to honor him," said Magnus Ranstorp, an al Qaeda expert at the Swedish National Defense College.
Oh and lest we forget the US created him:The United States helped to build up Zarqawi's aura, even before the invasion of Iraq, when Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations in 2003 he was part of a "sinister nexus" between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
Some security analysts played down the impact of his death, saying Zarqawi's network represented only a fraction of the wider insurgency in which less extreme resistance groups had gained in strength.
It was business as usual in Iraq on Thursday, with two bombs killing 15 people and injuring 36 in Baghdad within a couple of hours of Maliki's announcement.
"Other Zarqawis will soon spring up," said Nadim Shehadi of London's Chatham House think-tank. "The Iraqi insurgency is a very loose organization and I don't see how the decapitation of it will have such a great impact."
(BTW how do I get a job as a "security analyst" or "al Qaeda expert"? I reckon I can spout the same clap trap as these ones)A reserved Sunni intellectual who is quite particular in the language he uses summed up the feeling surrounding al Zarqawi’s death: “Goddamn that motherfucker for what he has done to Iraq.”
A Shia friend may have said it best, “Zarqawi would not listen to ballots, today there is no mistaking that he listened to the bombs.”
09 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
09 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
09 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Our letter opened with a paragraph that accurately summarized the most bizarre elements of Mr. Friedman’s attack, then reacted with this one-word sentence: “Rubbish.”
That word accurately portrays how we felt about the column. Personally, I felt a stronger word referring to male bovine excrement would have been more appropriate, but my boss tends to express himself more politely than I in these situations.
The Times suggested “rubbish” be changed first to, “We beg to differ.” We objected. The Times then suggested it be changed to, “Not so.” We stood our ground. In the end, the Times refused to let us call the column “rubbish.”
Why? “It’s not the tone we use in Letters,” wrote Mary Drohan, a letters editor.
What rubbish.
How arrogant.
10 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
14 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
15 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
By effectively criminalizing sex jobs, as is the case in much of the USA, and by (now) making it likely that any complaint will be ignored the unfortunate women trapped at the bottom of this industry are at the mercy of their crminal pimps and dealers. [...] If you think, as most do, that rape is bad, that female exploitation is bad, then you need to think through your response so that you ensure that future reports are treated seriously. [...] The deal here is that if you end up getting people sympathising for some innocents who are accused of rape when it isn't then you end up getting people sympathising with scumbags who actually did rape women and sympathy for the accused when it is undeserved means that they will probably walk free and rape more women.
This emphatically not the case with what I wrote a week or so later, when I was misled by Mike Nifong's statements that appear to have been blatent lies contradicted by medical evidence (H/T La Shawn) that seem to indicate either that he is incompetant or that he prefers to slime the reputation of innocents in order to keep his job. Since, as I understand it, he only won the primary in May and will face the real election in November I would think that the voters of North Caroline have a clear duty to remove this scumbag from office then as La Shawn Barber requests.There is another issue with all this nonsense. There is a stereotype out there about black females as “ghetto baby-mamas” hypersexual, loud and without integrity. Many good decent smart and driven black females struggle against this stereotype every day of their lives. They must work that much harder to overcome this.
If you wanted to have a case that reinforced generally racist/sexist stereotypes this is it. If you wanted to keep your black women poor and abused it would be hard to imagine a better way to do so with the least amount of effort.15 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
A number of bars and pubs are also running promotions such as free drinks when England concedes a goal.
This was clearly the canny Scotch reputation for penny-pinching generous gestures at work and no doubt may of the publicans involved were praying to any deity they could for a robust English defense. Harry's Place writer Wardytron draws another conclusion:If one wanted to be cruel - which of course one doesn't - one might suggest that this kind of behaviour, somewhat lacking as it is in magnanimity, hinted at an inferiority complex, or that it was a poor substitute for actually being at a World Cup. Not me though - I'm happy for people to support whoever they want, and think it's ridiculous that Scottish politicians should feel obliged to support England. But perhaps in future, in order to avoid all these petty arguments and give them someone they can all support, maybe the Scots should form a football team of their own so that they can enjoy the World Cup like everyone else.
Still (HT Jane Galt) football fever clearly showed Tony Blair's priorities and, one has to say gained him rare approval from me:BRITISH representatives in Brussels spent the evening before the European-Union summit (held on Thursday June 15th and on Friday) rigging up a television room so Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister, could watch England take on Trinidad and Tobago in the World Cup. That interested him more than talk about the constitution, which the rest of the summiteers were scheduled to discuss at the same time.
Even though it has to be said that England would probably be better server by Tone going into that meeting and making it clear that the EU constitution should be canned permenantly along wth most of the accompanying EU commission power grabs.16 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Dear Barflies
I'm sorry to have to announce that Jim Baen suffered a stroke on Monday, and has been in the hospital ever since. His condition is serious, but it's too early for any prognosis as to how he'll fare from here on in.
His family has arrived in NC, and are with him in the hospital. I've been to see him, as have other members of Baen's staff and his friend David Drake. In the meantime, so far as Baen Books is concerned, our plans continue on schedule.
The business is fine, we're all simply very concerned about Jim.
Toni Weisskopf
Chief editor, Baen Books
My thoughts and hopes are with him and I have no doubt that prayers, candles etc. for his recovery to any relevant deity will be appreciated. I'll merely echo a fellow barfly with "Get Well, Dammit"19 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
19 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
I saw Hugh Hewitt had a question about how to read the chances of the US progressing in the world cup, which reminds me that many people get confused by the scoring system. So here's the $1 basic tour:
There are 4 teams in a group and they each play everyone else (i.e. 3 matches total), the top two teams then progress to the knock-out stage, with the top team in one group playing the runner up in the next group and so on.
You get 3 points for a win and 1 point for a draw. With three matches that means if you win all three you get 9 points and that mathematically if you get 6 points (two wins) after two games you are bound to have qualified no matter what. Hence in group A (Germany, Ecuador, Poland, Costa Rica) with Germany and Ecuador on 6 points each the only question is which one of the two becomes the top team and which the runner up.
In group B there has been one draw (between Sweden and Trinidad) which means that although it is clear that England will qualify (2 wins) and Paraguay will not (2 losses) it is uncertain which team out of Sweden and Trinidad will be the other team. If England lose or draw with Sweden then Sweden qualify. If England win then Trinidad will be the runner up if they beat Paraguay by a sufficiently good margin so that they have more goals than Sweden does (the question devolves to goal difference then if that ties, total goals scored and then by some number of more exotic statistics).
The US is bottom of its group (E) with one point, but it could still qualify. The final games are Italy:Czech Republic and USA:Ghana; although the US has to win it also depends on the other match.
If Italy beat the Czechs then the US will be the runner up in the group (Italy 7 points - US 4 points - Czech Republic and Ghana 3 points). If Italy lose then the US will qualify so long as their goal difference is ahead of Italy's (at present the US has a GD of -3, and Italy has one of +2) and if the other match is a draw the US will qualify so long as their goal difference is ahead of the Czech Republic's (CR currently has a GD of +1).
Thus the US would prefer it if Italy win; if there is a draw or the Czechs win then the US will go through if they beat Ghana by a big enough margin and that is going to be tough. By my calucaltions if there is a draw the US have to win by better than 4-0 which is going to be a stretch but if the Czechs win then the more goals the Czechs score the less the US have to score - a 3-0 Czech win and a 3-0 US win would do for example as would a 4-0 Czech win combined with a 2-0 US one (and I think a US 2-1 win would be OK too).
Personally I would prefer it if Ghana qualifies (which means they have to beat or draw with the US) because I greatly preferred their football style to the US one and (FWIW) I'd prefer the Czechs to beat the Italian prima donnas but I don't really have a dog in that group so if Italy and the US qualify that's fine by me,
In group C we already know that Argentina and the Netherlands will go through
Group D is like Group B with Portugal qualified and Iran out but the possibility of either Mexico or Angola going through.
In group F Brazil have qualified but any of the other teams could (in theory) also qualify although Japan will only qualify if they beat Brazil by some large amount (as if) AND Australia don't win.
In group G, Togo cannot qualify and France must win their last match against Togo to qualify. The other two teams will both qualify no matter what so long as Togo beats or draws with France. If Frence wins and Switzerland:Korea is a draw then the who goes through depends on goal difference and that calculation is complicated. I think France need to win by at least 2-0 to be qualify but I could be wrong.
The only group where things are completely up in the air is Group H where the second matches are being played this evening.19 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
20 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Meanhile the new UN Rights Council has the urgent task of sending to the Genral Assembly a 'vital' bill guaranteeing the rights of 'indigenous peoples'.
To most people, 'indigenous' has the simple meaning of people who were the original inhabitants of a land. Thus in Africa the Bushmen, Pygmies, Baka, Berbers and other groups are rightly nominated in the UN list of indigenes.
But then there are countries like Kenya:Despite being the oldest group of humans yet researched by New Zealand's Massey University DNA project Kenya's Turkana people are not, according to the United Nations, 'indigenous'. Having some 35,000 years of history won't quite qualify one for favoured treatment by the UN's new Human Rights Council.
So who gets the indigenous rights in Kenya?The obvious answer is read lots of coffee-table books. There have been more big glossy books written about Kenya's Maasai people (arrived in Kenya around 1450 AD via Chad and Sudan)than any other East African tribe. No surprise then that the only people in Kenya who are 'indigenous', in the UN's report, are the Maasai. All the rest are talking turkey........sorry, talking Turkana.
How the Kenya Government will vote when the Human Rights Council bill reaches the General Assembly, nobody knows. Hopefully it will be not to declare 90% of their own Kenyans 'foreigners'. Stand by for waves of professional Maasai activists clad in beads and shukas claiming back the whole country they once ruthlessly conquered from the 'pre-indigenous' people who were inconveniently in Kenya before them. That's material enough for 56 more books, 3 mini-series and "Maasai-The Movie".
By that argument C Columbus, F Pisaro and various other conquistadores only missed out on being counted as indigenoous inhabitants of South and Central America b about 50 years. Damn. I think that makes the Mongols the indigenous inhabitants of practically everywhere from Baghdad to Beijing via Moscow and it lets the Turks in as indigenous inhabitants of Istanbul even though they occupied a city that must have been built by magic because some of its buildings are still standing despite no one having been there before (oh and please don't ask how come there appears to have been a viable empire run from that location 1000 years earlier).20 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
20 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
22 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
It’s probably also worth noting that there are probably a few South Korean officials who fear the Americans might actually respond to a test by delivering a world of hurt on the North via B-2 or F-117, and do I really have to explain why somebody within North Korean artillery range and a one-hour drive from a goodly percentage of the Korean People’s Army might not necessarily view that as a fortuitous turn of events?
Majikthise links (for the purposes of debate, as she clarifies) to an article by former Clinton officials Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry where they argue that North Korea cannot be allowed to test its new long-range ballistic missile and propose precisely the course of action that the Marmot fears. My prefered option is that proposed over at Big Lizards namely that if America's Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) programs are as capable as they are supposed to be then the prefered option would be to shoot the missile down. This would send a message not unlike that proposed in the initial article but without damaging any N Korean soil. It would also send a message to a number of other nations which couldn't hurt.22 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
There are some things I can't control, our excremental power company, San Diego Gas and Electric, who deliver the highest priced electricity in the US, some of the time, is one. We had a 12 hour power outage that completely drained the UPSes from 11PM to 7AM Friday night. The UPSes won't restart until they are fully charged (otherwise the shutdown software goes into an infinite loop when there isn't enough run-time left to shutdown gracefully, and you need to run a full charge cycle after a full discharge or risk damaging the battery), which didn't happen until the afternoon.
Anyway I semi-facetiously suggested that he invest in some solar panels to which I received this excellent rant which needs additional publicity:There's a market for solar panel systems for the house, but I don't know of one for upses. Thing is, they don't have DC charging connectors, in general. [Snip geeky tech bits]
The real solution is to take the nimbys and enviros who opposed power plants, and power transmission lines, and cut off THEIR electricity first. Then, pass a law invalidating all HOA rules and CC&Rs against solar and wind generation. Solar is still really inefficient. It would take my whole roof to generate what I can do with two small Yachting type wind turbines (which are whisper silent, and small enough to fit on a 30' boat's rail), but I'm forbidden to do wind power here. Wind is also more consistent here, as I'm in a valley that runs East-West, so I get 15kts of breeze offshore @ night, and onshore in the day. The only time it's calm is early morning and around sunset.
The problem is, there's an unholy alliance between luddites (the proper term for most "Environmentalists"), lookists (the people who care more how things look than whether they work or not), and an ignorant and disinterested public. Everyone screams when the power goes out or gas is $4 a gallon, but they all also give to the Sierra Club and Surfrider (who oppose new power plants, transmission lines, and offshore oil drilling), vote for politicians who kowtow to them, and leave all their lights on, run the ac, and drive SUVs.
The real symbol of the total idiocy of Californians is the ubiquitous 1960s VW Bus with the environmentalist stickers plastered all over it. Those things get 12-15 MPG, pollute like crazy (no emissions controls), leak oil (the horizontally opposed case motor needs regular bolt torquing, which most owners know nothing about), and are a safety hazard to boot.
I know, I used to have one (but I didn't plaster it with stickers).
We had a power outage here too this week, although for less than an hour rather than the 12 hour one he got (remember everything is bigger in America) so I think I must look into my local capitainerie and see what is on offer wind-generator-wise. The cost of solar is also dropping and a combo of solar plus wind plus a large number of lead acid batteries would probably make me independant of the electrical grid. I don't know how much it would cost and I doubt it would be cost effective at present (I think you'd need to have at least a 3yr ROI), but it is intriguing given that oil prices remain high and my house is heated by fuel oil, an option which was very attractive a few years back but which isn't now that even fuel oil is nearing the €1/litre mark.26 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
26 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is to donate about $37bn (£20bn) - most of his vast personal fortune - to Bill Gates' charitable foundation.
Mr Buffett will hand 10 million shares in his Berkshire Hathaway firm to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In a statement, Mr and Mrs Gates said they were "awed" by the donation, thought to be the largest charitable gift ever made in the United States.
The foundation aims to fight disease and promote education around the world.
Although governments do give aid to the poor it is, as is well known, frequently wasted and skimmed off. The BBC notes that one condition of this gift is that either Bill or Melinda Gates remain involved in the charity. In other words Buffett thinks his mate Bill is not going to tolerate that sort of waste. One suspects that he may also like the potiential for innovative efforts that personally directed philanthropy can offer and on that note here is a fasicnating tale of how the Gates Foundation is helping prostitutes in India to stay healthy:BANGALORE: Under a project facilitated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, about 500 sex workers in Mysore own chip-embedded smart cards, which when presented during transactions help them get discounts at select shops and hotels and earn them loyalty points that can be redeemed for discounts on later purchases. The shopping basket can include provisions, food at restaurants and clothes.
But the card serves another purpose. It has the medical record of the sex worker, who has to compulsorily get his or her health check up at a clinic once in three months. The card becomes inactive if the holder fails to do this. The sex workers will be checked for sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and treatment provided if necessary.
The vendors and the health specialists are provided with Simputer, the homegrown handheld device developed by scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), to bridge the digital divide and the data is stored in real time at a central server to maintain confidentiality.
The encrypted card bars access of health records by traders, while doctors cannot find out the business transaction details. “Sex workers face stigma and discrimination in their daily life. The smart card is a symbol of self-esteem that creates a sense of inclusion for them in the society,” Ratna, a community member at Ashodaya, a non-government organisation (NGO) that works on AIDS, said.
[...]KHPT officials said that the smart card initiative came from discussion with the sex workers, who identified an incentive of discounts with a health card to be a better alternative than a pure health card.
I love the note at the end that the actual users were consulted about what they wanted. How many enormous government aid schemes bother to ask the beneficiaries if they actually want what they are being given? Think of the wonderful EU aid to Russia as the classic example here and note how the bureaucrats say they don't intend to change things despite the revelations of immense waste. I doubt BillG will behave the same way.26 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress. Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defense against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight. We believe The Times and others in the press have served the public interest by accurately reporting on these programs so that the public can have an informed view of them. [...]
It's not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. While some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and while some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence, we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don't know about it.
This is completely and surely wilfully missing the point. The NY Times seems to be arguing that somehow it can inform the American public without informing Al Qaeda. This is patently absurd and it is easy to show that absurdity by making a comparison.26 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Can the US do much about this potential situation? Nearly anything the US does in Somalia, covert or overt, will be used to blame and discredit it regionally with moderate, important countries like Kenya. Already this is the media reaction locally. It is basically misplaced criticism, but it sells in the global anti-American market.
The US should rather rely on the natural ability of Somalis to implode and their penchant for pissing off everyone who happens to be their neighbour. This the Islamic Courts militia will surely do, sooner or later.
However most of this post today is about posts on Meskel Square which is written from Ethiopia. He has two posts up about technology and the thrid world which should be read by everyone who pontificates about the "global internet" and so on. The first (with three must read links) illustrates the limits of Ethiopian internet access, something which applies practically everywhere else in Africa too (although - ironically - Somalia may be an exception). Essentially the problem boils down to the incumbent telcos and the associated government bureaucrats who do their best to shake down telecom users and would be alternative operators for as much money as they can.So the installation went surprisingly well. There were four or five easily-understood questions and, no more than 20 minutes later, my detested Windows ME welcome screen was gone for good. In its place was a minimalist plain brown desktop.
This is the first great thing about switching to Linux - an end to clutter. No more QuickTime forcing itself into your startup menu. No more of those pre-installed first-six-months-subscription-free packages that Dell loves to force on to its valued customers. Just a plain brown screen which you can actually use as a desktop - a place to leave those few documents that you are currently working on.
There are lots of other great things about Linux. There is the almost total lack of spyware, worms and viruses. There is the universe of free software waiting for you to download. There is the volunteer spirit of the whole Linux community. As a wannabe geek, I even enjoyed the control and responsibility of using the command line interface.
So, why am I sitting here with the headache and the blurry vision and the clumsy fingers? It is because I have hit a brick wall.
There is one thing that the bright-eyed fans of Ubuntu and its kind never tell you. That is that if you install it on to an old Windows machine in a country where dial-up internet connections are still the only way – then you are in for a rough, rough ride.
Ubuntu, you see, doesn’t like winmodems - the modem systems installed as standard in most commercially available PCs sold with a Window operating system (ie almost all of them). Minutes after my wonderfully easy install, I found I had no way of connecting to the internet.
It turns out that other people have had the same problem and there has been considerable debate about how to make the drivers available that turn a winmodem into a linmodem. All of which, of course, involves downloading drivers from the internet which is a bit tricky to do if you don't have an internet conenction.This isn't supposed to be a Ubuntu-sucks post. When it comes to Linux and open source software, I really want to believe. But I can only keep trying for so long.
Maybe a bit of Bil Gates' charitable dosh will go towards providing cheap computers and internet boadband to Africa?28 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
There is no semblance of reality in this book. I deliberately wrote it ignoring any reality that got in the way of the story. That's not how I normally write, but I did so in this story and will continue to do so in the rest of the books in this series.However he does take a little more care in his depiction of entrapment, the sex-trade, and how to recover from rape. Indeed, although this series is about as un-PC as it is possible to be, the depiction of the sex industry as effectively mass, repeated rape is probably something that most feminists would agree with and, while he clearly exaggerates for dramatic effect, the stories that one reads in the newspapers about abused Eastern European sex-workers in Western Europe show that he is basing his description on a genuine situation. On the other hand he also makes good clear arguments that explain why, for some women, becoming a prostitute may be better than remaining at home on the farm, essentially putting Thomas Hardy's "The Ruined Maid" into prose.
28 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
"I always start with the premise that the question is, why should we not publish? Publishing information is our job. What you really need is a reason to withhold information."
Well heck, since he's confused about why not to publish here is a reason:Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. The cost of these plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists.
The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must be closer coordination among America's law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies.[...]
Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules. These need to be accompanied by strong sanctions against doing business with financial institutions based in these nations. The Bush administration initially opposed such measures. But after the events of Sept. 11, it appears ready to embrace them.
The Treasury Department also needs new domestic legal weapons to crack down on money laundering by terrorists. The new laws should mandate the identification of all account owners, prohibit transactions with "shell banks" that have no physical premises and require closer monitoring of accounts coming from countries with lax banking laws. Prosecutors, meanwhile, should be able to freeze more easily the assets of suspected terrorists. The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold hearings this week on a bill providing for such measures. It should be approved and signed into law by President Bush.
New regulations requiring money service businesses like the hawala banks to register and imposing criminal penalties on those that do not are scheduled to come into force late next year. The effective date should be moved up to this fall, and rules should be strictly enforced the moment they take effect. If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one.
written in some minor New York paper in September 2001.[O]thers ... were uncomfortable with the sense that what started as a temporary program had acquired a kind of permanence.
seems to further indicate that you are against the program. Now if it were indeed the case that Osama had been killed or captured and Islamic terrorism had stopped in say 2002 this might be a reasonable position, but the fact is that Islamic terrorism has not in fact stopped and Bin L has not shuffled off this mortal coil. Hence if one believed in 2001 that it was important to "disable the financial networks used by terrorists" consistency would seme to indiate that one would still be in favour of this in 2006 and hence that one would not blurt out details about it when asked not to, especially when know (and reported) that it was successfull in identifying some terrorists.28 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Dear Friends,
GSFP and Code Pink are sponsoring a hunger strike for peace which begins July 04, called Troops Home Fast Some of us like Dick Gregory and Diane Wilson will be fasting until the troops come home from Iraq, and some, like me, will be fasting for a specified time. My fast will begin on 7/04 and end on the last day of Camp Casey: 09/02.
Unfortunately it looks like they won't be giving up all their food so they might survive but we can always hope. Anyway from the photo Michelle posted to accompany her post on this subject, it looks like Comrade Cindy could stand losing a few pounds....29 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
(New York, June 22, 2006) – Iran should immediately remove Tehran’s notoriously abusive prosecutor general from its delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Human Rights Watch said today. The prosecutor general, Saeed Mortazavi has been implicated in torture, illegal detention, and coercing false confessions by numerous former prisoners.
“Iran’s decision to send Mortazavi to Geneva demonstrates utter contempt for human rights and for the new council,” said Joe Stork deputy director of Middle East and North Africa division for Human Rights Watch. “Iran has just confirmed why U.N. members refused to elect it to the Human Rights Council.”
The HRW notes that:In 2002, a human rights expert appointed by the old U.N. Commission on Human Rights to monitor the human rights situation in Iran took the extraordinary step of naming Mortazavi publicly in his report and calling for him to be suspended from the bench.
Somehow I doubt that Mr Mortazavi will be arrested during his trip to Switzerland. One wonders what his speech to the HR council will consist of? other than duck-billed platitudes that is. And one wonders whether the HR Council will decide to follow even the minimal advice of HRW and refuse to have anything to do with the Iranian delegation while Mortazavi remains a member of it.When Eleanor Roosevelt took the podium at the UN to argue passionately for the elaboration of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the world responded. Today, when the human rights machinery was renewed with the formation of a Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Commission on Human Rights, and the US chose to stay on the sidelines, the loss was everybody’s.
I hope and believe the new Council will prove itself to be a stronger and more effective body than its predecessor. But there is no question that the US decision to call for a vote in order to oppose it in the General Assembly, and then to not run for a seat after it was approved by 170 votes to 4, makes the challenge more difficult.
If the new council is indeed to prove itself stronger and more effective it needs to deal with this Iranian delegation. If it permits this blatent challenge then rather than "stronger and more effective", the correct phrase will be "even weaker and less effective, with a spine like a jellyfish".29 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
29 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
For example, the traditional model of electronic publishing required that the works be encrypted. Jim thought that just made it hard for people to read books, the worst mistake a publisher could make. His e-texts were clear and in a variety of common formats.
While e-publishing has been a costly waste of effort for others, Baen Books quickly began earning more from electronic sales than it did from Canada ($6,000/month). By the time of Jim's death, the figure had risen to ten times that.
I have no real idea of the finances of Baen Books - I made some estimates in a series of posts around the new year - but if, as Daiv wrote, Baen Books was pulling down around US$750,000/year in eBook sales that is probably the most revenue of any publisher. It is also worth noting that the US$750,000/year does not seem to have been either at the expense of other sales outlets and that it is massively profitable with a gross profit margin probably above 50% even including the roughly $1/copy royalty paid. There is no doubt that some authors and publishers disagree vehemently with the Baen model but Jim appears to have been crying all the way to the bank. Eventually enough authors (and maybe some publishers) are going to pay attention and do the same thing a decade or so after Jim Baen first figured out why the internet made everything different.30 June 2006 Blog Home : All June 2006 Posts : Permalink
Update: I see from David Drake's website that a suggested memorial to Jim Baen is to buy The World Turned Upside Down which is IMHO a truly excellent idea(link goes to my review of the book in January 2005)