You did not have arthritis of the spine. Your reputation as a "great warrior" is intact. How do we know? Nuclear power. Specifically:
The United Nations nuclear agency is using its expertise to help archaeologists unearth millennia-old secrets, from the supposed murder of King Tutankhamun to the mysterious death of Great Pharaoh Ramesses II, from Egyptian mummies.
Huh?
Paleoradiology is a type of science using nuclear technologies – including x-rays and neutron activation analysis – to study artifacts, skeletons, mummies and fossils.
Oh. Science is pretty cool. And the IAEA is about more than just monitoring Iran's nuclear facilities (which, though important, is actually not the only place where the agency works).
(image from flickr user mharrsch under a Creative Commons license)
Recognizing that the issues on which the United States and Russia are extremely unlikely agree to are limited to a relatively small sub-sphere is, unfortunately and erroneously, not enough for some commentators. Dave Schuler, at Outside the Beltway, for example, finds nothing on which the former Cold War foes can build a relationship. Yet how Schuler can argue in one paragraph that "[t]here is no more important bilateral relationship between nations than that between Russia and the United States" and in the next that "[w]e don’t really need Russia’s cooperation on pressing world issues like climate change" is utterly baffling to me. His point is that, as much as the two countries need a good relationship, "there isn't much basis" for one. On the contrary -- I'd argue quite easily that the very need for this good relationship -- evidenced by, say, their ability, cited by Schuler, "to destroy the world" -- is more than basis enough.
Dan Drezner respectfully disagrees with the logic Schuler uses to connect Russia's strategic position with its U.S. relationship. The flaws in the logic that he uses to dismiss the mutual needs and interests of this relationship, I'd add, are encapsulated by that flabbergasting statement: "We don’t really need Russia’s cooperation on pressing world issues like climate change." As a country, Russia is the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. China, the United States, then Russia. How, pray tell, could any global emissions reductions system have any success whatsoever without inducing Russia to stopper its smokestacks?
From Miliband's most recent blog post. The British were supportive of Ban's recent trip to Burma.
Ban Ki Moon deserves credit for not taking no for an answer from the Burmese authorities. He refused to postpone his visit - a visit that he promised to make when he visited the country at the time of Cyclone Nargis to discuss political and economic reform. Ban's closing speech was clear and definitive - the regime's refusal to engage properly was reprehensible.
The easy course would have been to be put off. Now he will report to the Security Council and every member will need to decide how much they care about the refusal of the regime to accept basic international norms. The temptation is to say no visit should go ahead without pre-promising of the results. But sometimes it is worth the risk. This is one such case.
It’s getting very ugly in Xinjiang. The violent riots by ethnic Uighurs have now been followed by vigilante mobs of Han Chinese, chanting “We want revenge for our dead.” Urumchi is now under martial law. The death toll is at 156 and rising; no one has a clear breakdown on how many deaths were caused by police and how many by the rioters. 1400 people have been arrested. The UK’s Telegraph newspaper has a correspondent on the ground, who is reporting that fresh demonstrations have started after the police subdued the activity on Sunday.
Al-Jazeera English has been reporting live from Xinjiang and putting their reports on YouTube. Their correspondent, Melissa Chan, has been on Twitter live from Xinjiang. As the New York Times reports, Twitter has been blocked by the Chinese government, but she is texting a friend who posts for her via proxy. The internet has been blocked completely in some parts of Xinjiang. For additional live tweeting from Xinjiang, you can follow Austin Ramzy reporting for Time.com and Malcolm Moore with the Daily Telegraph.
It’s still hard to identify the cause of the violence. The Chinese government continues to blame violent separatists, and it has accused exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer of masterminding the violence. Kadeer issued a statement today condemning both the Chinese government and “the violent actions of a number of Uyghur demonstrators that have been reported.” BBC reports that the violence was triggered by “a brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese several weeks earlier in a toy factory thousands of miles away in Guandong province.” The follow-up protests seem to be women angry about the imprisonment of their sons and spouses.
At a signing ceremony, Obama and Medvedev, wearing identical dark suits, white shirts and red ties, pledged to finalise a treaty by the year-end to cut the number of deployed nuclear warheads on each side to 1,500-1,675 from levels above 2,200.
If they both happened to wear the same thing, then maybe they just happened to choose similar target numbers for warhead reductions.
Of course, that's not how diplomacy is conducted. I have to agree with Matt Yglesias that, in terms of negotiating with Russia, the game of huffing and puffing about topics on which neither side is at all likely to budge is far inferior to conducting negotiations on issues about which the two countries may actually come to an agreement. If one of these happens to be fashion, then so be it.
To read this Wall Street Journal editorial, one might seriously conclude that Medvedev doesn't deserve to wear the power suit that befits an American president.
Here's an idea. Set aside the dime-store national psychoanalysis and return to first American principles and interests. This summit rests on a fiction: That Russia is an equal power to the U.S. that can offer something concrete in return for American indulgence.
Here's the thing. It doesn't matter that Russia is not "an equal power." Nobody this side of the Cold War is disputing that. But it doesn't change the fact that Russia and the United States have some interests in common, and other issues in which they differ, but both have a lot at stake. The way to achieve these "first American principles and interests" is not to rail against Russia's autocracy and heavy-handed role in certain small, independent countries in its orbit (the protection of Georgia's freedom may be important, but an American "principle" of the first order?). Reducing Russia's nuclear stockpile, securing its cooperation in fighting climate change -- these are the concrete goals that the Journal scorns. And it's going to take something much more nuanced than "indulgence" -- and, okay, more substantive than matching suits -- to reach them.
A picture of the two leaders from before their historic agreement to wear suits that are more than just almost identical.
It's often been said that the global economic crisis has hit the developing world the hardest. I've always taken that to be sort of a given, but the new 2009 Millennium Development Goals report, just released, is one of the first documents I've seen to actually quantify the toll that the current economic downturn has taken on the world's poor.
The report shows that significant gains had been made since the 2000 Millennium Declaration to reduce the number of people around the world living in abject poverty. Over the course of the last year, however, progress made over the last decade has slowed--and even reversed.
Major advances in the fight against extreme poverty from 1990 to 2005, for example, are likely to have stalled. During that period, the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day decreased from 1.8 billion to 1.4 billion. In 2009, an estimated 55 million to 90 million more people will be living in extreme poverty than anticipated before the crisis.
Likewise, the encouraging trend in the eradication of hunger since the early 1990s was reversed in 2008, largely due to higher food prices. The prevalence of hunger in the developing regions is now on the rise, from 16 per cent in 2006 to 17 per cent in 2008. A decrease in international food prices in the second half of 2008 has failed to translate into more affordable food for most people around the world.
One of the MDGs is to halt the spread of AIDS and increase access to treatment. A second report out today, by UNAIDS and the World Bank, shows how the economic crisis is threatening the global fight against AIDS. Here is UN Spokesperson Michelle Montas describing the report's findings.
Finally, in related news, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and TB is facing a $3 billion shortfall this year. Hard times, indeed.
The Security Council is holding a closed-doors meeting in five about two minutes to discuss North Korea's most recent missile launch. In the meantime...
A U.N. sanctions committee is considering blacklisting more North Korean companies and individuals for supporting Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs. It is meant to complete its work by Friday.
The folks in Pyongyang don't seem to be doing themselves any favors.
If the G8 can figure out what to do about Italy, they might want to heed some of the Secretary-General's advice. In another op-ed that just might increase a few crushes (or maybe just boost his global popularity), Ban presents the responses to the global financial crisis last fall and the H1N1 epidemic this spring as evidence of the interconnectedness of global problems -- and how vigorous global cooperation can have a resounding impact. Armed with these examples, he lays down the gauntlet for the G8 on three of the causes he has taken up: global warming, the Millennium Development Goals, and the world food crisis. On the first, he sets an ambitious goal:
First, the G8 and other major emitters of greenhouse gases must intensify their work to seal a deal at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December. That agreement must be scientifically rigorous, equitable, ambitious and exact. Achieving the goal of limiting the global mean temperature increase to two degrees Celsius will require nations to cut carbon emissions by 50% by 2050. The G8 and other industrialised countries must take the lead by committing to emission cuts of at least 80% from 1990 levels.
It's worth pointing out that this is the minimum that will be necessary to prevent the worst from happening. Yet it's also, thus far, more than the United States and other wealthy countries are ready to commit to. As Ban writes, "co-operation works, but we've only just gotten started."
Even though Israel is not participating, or did not allow the commission -- headed by South African judge Richard Goldstone -- to pass through Israeli territory, it seems to have helped bring about two developments that can be applauded.
First, despite its opposition to the probe, which is mandated to investigate actions of both the Israeli military and Hamas, the Israeli government has agreed to provide compensation for the damage inflicted upon UN buildings, including a school, in Gaza during the December/January offensive. This is a welcome step, though it does not of course excuse the inexcusable: bombing a UN building, even by accident, but particularly if targeted, makes Ban Ki-moon very, very angry.
Second, and more directly, the commission was able to hear from Israeli witnesses, most prominently the father of captured soldier Gilad Shalit, in Geneva. That the investigation is seeking out such witnesses should be signs enough to the Israeli brass that it is not "hopelessly biased," but alas, that train, as they say, has sailed.