A number of people have asked me about this Lou Dobbs/Christopher Hitchens segment, which aired Thursday night on CNN. There is a lively discussion about it over in the comments section on Blogging Heads.
Despite Dobbs' hyperventilating, there is really not much to this. The 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Conferences periodically bring up some sort of anti-blasphemy resolution in UN forums. This done for domestic political consumption -- i.e. politicians in OIC countries table symbolic resolutions like this to curry favor with the religious right (sound familiar?). There's never been an anti-blasphemy resolution passed in the General Assembly and I don't expect there ever will be.
The segment is full of factual inaccuracies -- mainly, there is no such thing as a "binding General Assembly resolution." Contra Dobbs, there are only two ways way the United Nations could impose anti-blasphemy laws on Americans. 1) Through some sort of anti-blashphemy treaty convention, which the president signs and the Senate ratifies. 2) If the Security Council (on which the United States holds veto power) orders member states to adopt anti-blasphemy laws by invoking Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
I would submit to you, dear reader, that both scenarios are highly unlikely. The UN thought police will stay put in their black helicopters for the time being.
UPDATE: See this post for a correction and further thoughts on this issue.
U.N. peacekeepers have upset traditional wild asparagus harvesters on the ethnically divided island of Cyprus by preventing them from entering a buffer zone to gather the tasty shoots.
U.N. soldiers, restricting access to the buffer zone which splits the island from east to west after Cyprus was divided in a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a Greek-inspired coup, say they are only doing their job, but residents are livid.
The peacekeepers are clearly "only doing their job" here, as maintaining the buffer zone is, after all, what they are stationed in Cyprus to do. On the other hand, maybe a little harmonious bout of asparagus-gathering would make it clear to the country's multiple governments that reaching a solution to their 35-year impasse would eliminate the need for a buffer zone, and enable Cypriots from both sides to harvest as many "tasty shoots" as they'd like.
(image from flickr user Clearly Ambiguous under a Creative Commons license)
The fringe candidates of the U.S. presidential primaries are long since forgotten, but some of them seem to be trying to outdo one another with the wacky bills that get introduced from time to time in the House of Representatives. Back in September, just days after Republican President George W. Bush affirmed the importance of the United Nations before the General Assembly, Republican Tom Tancredo introduced a bill aimed at kicking UN headquarters out of the New York City. Now Ron Paul has sought to one-up his former rival by not only booting the UN from the premises, but withdrawing from every international organization he can think of.
UN peacekeeping? Nope, not worth it. The UN Environmental Program? Extinct. The World Health Organization? Kill it. Heck, he even wants out of the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. And what about all those people around the world who benefit from these programs? As New York City's own Rudy Giuliani might say: Fuhgeddabout 'em! This is the "American Sovereignty Restoration Act." And when can these UN organizations expect their polite letter of withdrawal? Well, that's the best part of this going-nowhere legislation.
Except as otherwise provided, this Act and the amendments made by this Act shall take effect 2 years after the date of the enactment of this Act.
Which is to say, approximately two years after never.
(image of Ron Paul, 2007, from flickr user Kaptain Krispy Kreme under a Creative Commons license)
I’m just back from a briefing with economists Paul Collier (of Bottom Billion fame) and John Page of Brookings. The duo recently co-authored a report for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) called “Breaking in and Moving Up: New Industrial Challenges for the Bottom Billion and the Middle Income Countries.”
For fans of Collier (and I count myself as one) the report offers a follow-up to one of the key arguments of the Bottom Billion: that a robust manufacturing sector is critical to lifting least developed countries out of their poverty trap. Accordingly, the authors write that we should eschew “least developed countries” from our lexicon and instead refer to the world's poorest countries as “least developed manufacturing countries.”
Why manufacturing?
American Enterprise Institute Fellow John Bolton stopped being relevant a long time ago. Still, its a wonder that op-ed editors tend to publish him at a rate of stark-raving mad op-ed a week.
And don't miss Yglesias' legendary post in which he puts the "tiny" comment in context.
This was posted on the NYT's YouTube channel a couple of months ago. It is a disturbing depiction of the sexual violence inflicted on women around the world (in this case DR Congo):
Mixed news for the UN tribunal designed to investigate the assassination four years ago of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. On the one hand, the tribunal's work is scheduled to begin in The Hague on Sunday, a welcome milestone for a process that some feared would never get underway. On the other hand, though, three of the seven suspects held in Lebanese jails were summarily released by a judge yesterday, a mysterious development to say the least, given the proximity of the tribunal's start date.
The judge did not have to give a reason for his decision, which is perhaps discomfiting but also perhaps understandable because of various legal restrictions, et cetera. The timing of the release, though, coupled with the celebrations of the news in a reputedly "Islamic fundamentalist stronghold" to which the three civilian suspects returned, do add a certain questionable aura to the proceedings.
This is not to say that there is reason for skepticism about the tribunal itself. It is rigorously supported by many Lebanese, and its staffing and funding is split relatively evenly between international and Lebanese sources. The same questions still loom, though: if the chain of suspects does in fact lead up to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, how will the tribunal handle this tricky issue? I imagine the folks working on this one are relieved that the ICC's potential indictment of Sudanese president Bashir is going to come down first.
(image of Rafik Hariri, 2003)
You, readers, voted "Eat the View" as the idea you would most like to see the Obama administration implement, figuratively, on day one. Since then "Eat the View" has gone from an idea submitted to On Day One to a full on movement to plant a vegetable garden on the White House lawn.
The idea's progenitor is Roger Doiron of Kitchen Gardeners International. He recently visited Washington, DC and took time to chat with me about his idea and the public policy relevance of a White House "Victory Garden."
Fox News drags journalism through the mud to bring you the breaking story of socialist UN-loving liberals trying to mount an "assault on the family" and cede control of America's children to an international government the push to ratify a treaty upholding the rights of children, which the United States and Somalia are currently the only countries to object to. Let me repeat that: the United States and Somalia are the only countries not to have ratified a convention upholding the basic rights of children.
The fear, charitably expressed, is that ratifying this treaty will impinge on U.S. sovereignty and constrain parents' ability to raise their children without government interference. The reality, bluntly articulated, is that this is bunk. The convention abridges no parental rights, would affect no existing national laws, and involves no undue government intrusion on parenting whatsoever. Yet, according to the feverish paranoia of the head of the fringe outfit quoted obsequiously by Fox News, ratification would involve submitting every parental decision to the meddling bureaucrats in some dark world capital.
"Whether you ground your kids for smoking marijuana, whether you take them to church, whether you let them go to junior prom, all of those things . . . will be the government's decision," said Michael Farris, president of ParentalRights.org. "It will affect every parent who's told their children to do the dishes."
This is hysteria, channeled for a political purpose. Here are some of the more fundamental of the Convention's provisions:
States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life.
...
States Parties shall take measures to combat the illicit transfer and non-return of children abroad.
...
States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
Yes, the Convention stipulates that the "best interests of the child" serve as a "a primary consideration," but it does so with full regard for the "rights and duties of his or her parents." No ill-willed judges will be found knocking on every front door to lay down their unsolicited and unimpeachable pronouncements of whether or not a child can be sent to his room. The example is extreme to the point of frivolousness, but to hear opponents' wild claims -- "a group of unaccountable so-called experts in Switzerland [would] have a say over how children in America should be raised, educated and disciplined," claims Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation -- the caricature is not unwarranted. Only by creating a fictitious behemoth, an utterly chimerical beast of UN tyranny, can such frantic fear-mongerers distort what is an international agreement affording children certain basic human rights. That America has not given its full-fledged support to this premise is scandalous, and to allow such shrill voices to win the day would be an abdication of both our principles and the very concept of reason.