Watch this BBC coverage of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
(And of course, don't forget to check out the IPCC Facts website.)
Last Tuesday, during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing (video) on the "The Future of the United Nations Under Ban Ki-moon," a question was asked that reflects the conventional wisdom on the crisis in Darfur:
This conflict, I think, highlights the profound shortcomings of the United Nations, and I suspect we might be further down the road of acting decisively, if it were not for the restrictions we allow the Security Council to impose upon us. And I think that ... in the United Nations, we're sort of guaranteed the lowest common denominator approach to genocide.The response posited by former Senator Tim Wirth flipped the issue on its head and framed it in a way that should be of interest to those promoting a framework for responding quickly to the genocide.
Ten days ago, the peacekeeping force attached to the United Nations Mission in Haiti began incursions into gang infested neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince, with orders to arrest leaders of the organized criminal groups that terrorize the impoverished Cite-Soleil neighborhood. As the AP reports, it would seem that this campaign has shown some early signs of success. Peacekeepers on Monday arrested one Johnny Pierre Louis, a gang leader wanted in connection to the reprisal murders of two other gang members who had agreed to participate in a UN sponsored disarmament program. The program, administered by MINUSTAH (as the UN's Haiti mission is known), promises economic aid and job training in return for gang members relinquishing their arms.
The Government of Sudan has apparently refused to issue visas to a team of human rights investigators, dispatched to Darfur by the new Human Rights Council. The Council voted unanimously to send the team to Darfur and they were expected to start their work this week. But because they have not been given entry visas by the Sudanese government they are currently in a holding pattern in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Yesterday afternoon, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed his displeasure with Khartoum's behavior, saying “He [Bashir] said he would issue visas to the fact-finding mission. He said he would have no problem, and I am very much disappointed by the decision of the Sudanese government."
Unfortunately, there is precious little that Ban can do to force Khartoum to relent and issue the visas. Besides lodging strongly-worded complaints, there is little in the way of punitive measures available to the Secretary General that could help prod Khartoum into changing its behavior. Ultimately, this responsibility belongs to the Security Council. And so far, it would seem that member states are unwilling to apply the kind of pressure necessary to push a reluctant government in Sudan to yield to the demands of the international community.
The Bush administration will allow approximately 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the United States over the next year, a huge increase: according to the Associated Press, the U.S. has only allowed 463 refugees from Iraq into the country since the war began.
"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Wednesday with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres to outline the expanded U.S. program. The 7,000 would be resettled from nations outside Iraq where they have fled. The U.S. proposal also includes plans to offer special treatment for Iraqis still in the country whose cooperation with the U.S. government puts them at risk from sectarian reprisal." More
Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its report concluding (with 90% certainty) that human activity causes global warming, skeptics have come out in droves to undermine this conclusion. Some of these empirically-challenged pundits come from the Exxon-Mobilfunded American Enterprise Institute. Still others can be found in the pages of rightwing magazines like the National Review and similar refuges of fantasy.
For those of us in the reality-based community, the United Nations Foundation has set up a new website, IPCC Facts, that helps distill the IPCC report in language accessible to non-scientists like myself. With its "myths" page, the site is a particularly useful resource for those with the unfortunate task of having to debate climate change with the flat-earth people. Check it out.