Bono at Brighton

Bono addressed the Labour Party Conference at Brighton yesterday. His speech--not surprisingly to those who know something of his work beyond the stage and recording studio--pertained to Africa. Here are a few excerpts:

My name is Bono and I'm a rock star. . . . Excuse me if I appear a little nervous. I'm not used to appearing before crowds of less than 80,000. I heard the word party -- obviously got the wrong idea.

. . .

[Describing how he and his wife Ali became interested in Africa during a month-long stay at an orphanage in Ethiopia in the 1980s:] On our last day at the orphanage a man handed me his baby and said: take him with you. He knew in Ireland his son would live; in Ethiopia his son would die.

I turned him down.

In that moment I started this journey. In that moment I became the worst thing of all: a rock star with a cause.

. . .

Let's be clear about what this problem is and what this problem isn't. Firstly, this is not about charity, it's about justice.

Let me repeat that: This is not about charity, this is about justice. And that's too bad. Because you're good at charity. The British, like the Irish, are good at it. Even the poorest neighbourhoods give more than they can afford. We like to give and we give a lot.

But justice is a tougher standard.

. . .

That's the first tough truth.

The second is that to fight AIDS, and its root cause, the extreme poverty in which it thrives, it's not just development policy. It's a security strategy.

. . .

Listen, I know what this looks like, rock star standing up here, shouting imperatives others have to fulfill. But that's what we do, rock stars. Rock stars get to wave flags, shout at the barricades, and escape to the South of France. We're unaccountable. We behave accordingly.

But not you. You can't. You can't do that. See, we're actually counting on you. Politicians have to make the fight, do the work, and get judged by the results.

. . .

I don't care if you are Old Labour or New Labour. What is your party about if it's not about this--if it's not about equality, about justice, the right to make a living, the right to go on living?

"Justice is a tougher standard." Even from a rock star, it's refreshing to hear a call to a higher standard.

The Human Rights of Women

In his New York Times column yesterday, Nicholas Kristof wrote, "I firmly believe that the central moral challenge of this century, equivalent to the struggles against slavery in the 19th century or against totalitarianism in the 20th, will be to address sex inequality in the third world." Kristof's column tells the story of Mukhtaran Bibi, a Pakistani woman sentenced--for a "crime" not her own--by a village tribal council to be gang-raped. The sentence was carried out but Ms. Mukhtaran defied expectations by refusing to commit suicide after the rape.

Women around the world continue to be subjected to the same human rights abuses that men are subjected to while also suffering from countless gender-specific human rights abuses. Gertrude Mongella of Tanzania, the Secretary-General of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing 1995), said, "Women have always struggled with their men-folk for the abolition of slavery, the liberation of countries from colonialism, the dismantling of apartheid and the attainment of peace. It is now the turn of men to join women in their struggle for equality."

Extraordinary Rendition

H.R. 10, the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004," contains language that would authorize what is euphemistically called "extraordinary rendition." ("Extraordinary rendition"--a recently coined term not to be found in Black's Law Dictionary--refers to the practice of sending prisoners--suspected terrorists, in the current context--for questioning to countries such as Pakistan that can and do practice torture with impunity.)

Sec. 3032 of the proposed act, on the subject of "removal," requires the Secretary of Homeland Security "to revise the regulations prescribed by the Secretary to implement the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment" in such a way that suspected terrorists are excluded from legal protections now existing in law. Furthermore, the Secretary's revision of the regulations "shall also ensure that the burden of proof is on the applicant for withholding or deferral of removal under the Convention to establish by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured if removed to the proposed country of removal." In other words, suspects the United States seeks to deport to be questioned by other countries would have to prove that their removal would result in their being tortured. The section concludes with the proviso that "no court shall have jurisdiction to review the regulations adopted to implement this section." (Go here--and type in "H.R. 10"--to find the text of the bill.)

So there's no misunderstanding, this bill, if enacted in its present form, would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue regulations permitting suspected terrorists to be sent to other countries for torture. Such regulations would not be subject to judicial review, nor would they be constrained by U.S. obligations under the Convention Against Torture. Extraordinary rendition--outsourcing torture--would become the law of the land.

For additional information, see this press release from Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the sponsor of an amendment to remove the torture outsourcing provision from H.R. 10. If you need more to think about, read this column by Isabel Hilton in The Guardian (July 28, 2004) and ponder the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen caught up in the post-9/11 terrorist sweep.

Finally, consider calling or writing your Congressman to urge him or her to support Rep. Markey's efforts to prohibit the removal of suspects to countries that practice torture.

(Via Obsidian Wings through Kevin Drum's Political Animal.)

Just Because People Believe It . . .

. . . that doesn't make it so.

In 1821, Thomas Jefferson told the Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia, "No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity." A new poll out today by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland suggests that we may be headed for a test of Mr. Jefferson's dictum. This, from the press release announcing the poll results, tells why:

As the nation prepares to watch the presidential candidates debate foreign policy issues, a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll finds that Americans who plan to vote for President Bush have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, on the other hand, are largely accurate in their assessments. The uncommitted also tend to misperceive Bush’s positions, though to a smaller extent than Bush supporters, and to perceive Kerry’s positions correctly. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: “What is striking is that even after nearly four years President Bush’s foreign policy positions are so widely misread, while Senator Kerry, who is relatively new to the public and reputed to be unclear about his positions, is read correctly.”

Majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (84%), and the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the International Criminal Court (66%), the treaty banning land mines (72%), and the Kyoto Treaty on global warming (51%). They were divided between those who knew that Bush favors building a new missile defense system now (44%) and those who incorrectly believe he wishes to do more research until its capabilities are proven (41%). However, majorities were correct that Bush favors increased defense spending (57%) and wants the US, not the UN, to take the stronger role in developing Iraq’s new government (70%).

This, I think, raises an interesting question about the debate tomorrow night. If Kerry accurately characterizes Bush's foreign policy positions in the debate, will a majority of the American people simply assume he's lying? Perhaps a more interesting question is this: Will post-debate spinmeisters do more to clarify or more to obscure Bush's actual positions on foreign policy positions?

It's a more interesting question, but not, I think, one that's particularly difficult to answer.

A Thought (On Power)

"We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom."
Stephen Vincent Benét, Litany for Dictatorships, 1935

(One of many great epigrams found in Rourke and Boyer's International Politics on the World Stage.)

Black Gold

The price of a barrel of oil topped $50 today for the first time ever on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil for November delivery closed at $49.90 a barrel, a record-high closing price. In response, Saudi Arabia announced plans to increase production, but production throughout the OPEC states is already nearing capacity. There is, in other words, little spare capacity to bring into production.

Given this news, a few facts about oil--and oil consumption--may be useful.

• The United States imports approximately 12 million barrels of oil per day of which roughly 2.5 million barrels come from the Persian Gulf. Among OECD countries, Japan is second in oil imports with approximately 5.5 million barrels imported per day. Almost four-fifths of Japan's oil imports come from the Persian Gulf.
• U.S. crude oil production is currently just over five million barrels per day.
• The three top-selling vehicles in the United States (selling a combined 979,485 units in the first half of 2004) are pickup trucks. The best-seller for twenty-two years in a row--the Ford F-150--gets 17 MPG city and 20 MPG highway in its most fuel-efficient configuration. The Chevrolet Silverado and Dodge Ram pickups that follow right behind in the rankings get virtually the same gasoline mileage.

Our penchant for pickups (along with SUVs and other gas-guzzlers) continues to make a number of countries very wealthy. (See which ones here.)

Proliferation Update

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon said today that his country has turned the uranium from 8,000 spent fuel rods into weapons and that the danger of war on the peninsula is "snowballing." The number of fuel rods reprocessed suggests that North Korea may have as many as eight nuclear weapons.

For background on the DPRK's nuclear program, see the directory of Internet resources available here.

Women in Politics

Here are a few random notes on women's participation in politics worldwide.

• At present, women occupy 15.4 percent of the world's parliamentary seats, up from 12.7 percent five years ago.
• In the United States, there are 62 women in the House of Representatives (14.3 percent) and 13 in the Senate.
• Rwanda, with 39 women in its 80-seat legislature (48.8 percent), has the world's highest proportion of women in a national parliament.
• Only once in history has one woman succeeded another as president: In 1997, Mary McAleese succeeded Mary Robinson as president of Ireland.
• Two women have served consecutively as prime minister in New Zealand: Jenny Shipley and Helen Elizabeth Clark.

For data on women in parliamentary bodies, see the web site of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Information concerning female leaders is available at Zarate's Political Collections.

The Evolution of al Qaeda

This article in today's Los Angeles Times says what a number of analysts have been telling us for some time, but it is well worth reading nonetheless--particularly for those who haven't read what the terrorism experts have been saying. Here's the lede:

Authorities have made little progress worldwide in defeating Islamic extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda despite thwarting attacks and arresting high-profile figures, according to interviews with intelligence and law enforcement officials and outside experts.

The story goes on to state, "Since the loss of its base in Afghanistan and many of those leaders [who previously directed operations], the organization has dispersed its operatives and reemerged as a lethal ideological movement."

Richard A. Clarke, in Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (p. 263), reports that, following 9/11, he urged those who asked him what to read on the terrorist threat to watch a movie instead. The movie he recommended, Gillo Pontecorvo's classic The Battle of Algiers, recounts the French failure to understand--and challenge--the ideological foundations of the Algerian terrorists. Clarke writes (p. 262), "The second agenda item post-September 11 [after improving homeland security] should have been the creation of a counterweight ideology to the al Qaeda, fundamentalist, radical version of Islam because much of the threat we face is ideological, a perversion of a religion."

The United States is still not countering the Islamist ideology effectively. The ideological nature of the threat is something we must address, particularly as it becomes more and more apparent that al Qaeda is undergoing a transformation from terrorist organization to terrorist inspiration.

Ebola: An Update

Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF) is, with good reason, one of the most feared viruses on earth. It kills 50-90 percent of its human victims in a particularly gruesome fashion and it is highly contagious.

In Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, Dr. Ngoi Mushola's description of one of the first reported cases of the Ebola virus--in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in September 1976--is reprinted:

Findings. The affliction is characterized by a high temperature around 39 C; frequent vomiting of black, digested blood, but of red blood in a few cases; diarrheal emissions initially sprinkled with blood, with only red blood near death; epistaxis [nosebleeds] now and then; retrosternal and abdominal pain and a state of stupor; prostration with heaviness in the joints; rapid evolution toward death after a period of about three days, from a state of general health.

A recent outbreak of Ebola in southern Sudan offers some hope that health officials are learning to isolate the disease effectively, even though no cure is available.

On July 26, 2004, the last of seven Ebola-related deaths in Yambio, Sudan occurred. With no other known infections extant in the area, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak over on August 7. In all, seventeen cases were identified during the outbreak, one of the smallest outbreaks on record. Since the discovery of the Ebola virus, there have been 1,200 deaths from a total of approximately 1,850 cases of the disease.

Rapid response and effective quarantine measures appear to have limited the spread of Ebola in southern Sudan. This photo shows the quarantine area--complete with fences--constructed for patients during the Yambio outbreak.

Ebola is noteworthy for its virulence. HIV/AIDS, of course, continues to be a more significant threat in sub-Saharan Africa and worldwide. I plan to comment on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in a future post.

The Blogging Phenomenon

A year ago, I had no idea what a blog was. At the moment, I can't recall exactly when I first read one, although I'm reasonably certain that a Google search for some bit of political information was what first brought me into contact with either Kevin Drum's Calpundit (Drum now blogs on Washington Monthly's web site) or Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo. While in Italy last year, I began to add these and other web logs--including Legal Fiction and Warblogging--to my daily diet of news and commentary. (In Italy, the current events reading was always anchored by the print editions of the International Herald Tribune and La Repubblica, along with the online version of the New York Times. Now it's the online versions of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, although I'm trying to throw some foreign papers into the mix on a regular basis.)

A year ago, the bloggers I read were writing a lot about the mainstream media. They still are. Now mainstream journalists are beginning to write a lot about bloggers. Tomorrow's New York Times Magazine includes a feature story on political blogging.

According to the story, two million Americans have a blog. (My own research indicates that most are not as good as mine. On the other hand, that same research suggests that my blog has fewer photos of cats doing stupid things than the average blog.) It also says that James Rubin, John Kerry's right-hand man on foreign policy, claims to read blogs daily. Rubin didn't say which ones, so I don't guess we can tell whether he's very well informed or just someone who likes to see photos of cats doing stupid things.

It's probably premature to say that blogging has changed journalism--or politics--but it might not be premature by much. It's probably also premature to say that blogging has changed my classes--or even my approach to teaching--but that, too, might not be premature by much. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the blogging phenomenon.

Finally, for more information on the effect of the Internet on many different aspects of life, including politics, take a look at the studies done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The polls conducted by the Project tell us most of what we know today about who's doing what online.

Fin de Semana Farrago of Frivolity

It's the weekend and so it's time to mention some of the more amusing things I've seen (and heard) on the web in recent months. Here's the list--numbered but in no particular order:

1. The Borowitz Report is where I get my news when I just can't take it straight.
2. It's fun to write a speech for President Bush, especially when you can listen to him deliver it when you're done. (I tried, though, and there's no way to get him to mention Osama.)
3. This got a lot of publicity a month or so ago, but it's still fun to watch occasionally. It's Kerry and Bush singing "This Land Is Your Land" in the JibJab animation. (While you're there, take a look at the Founding Fathers rap.)
4. Who could have imagined that listening to Lyndon Johnson ordering pants over the phone could be so entertaining? (Be sure to click "Listen.")

Any suggestions for future weekends?

The Status of CEDAW

On September 1, the Federated States of Micronesia acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination of Women (CEDAW), a treaty drafted in 1979 to protect the human rights of women. The number of states that have ratified or acceded to CEDAW is now 178. The United States signed CEDAW in 1980 but has never ratified it.

Allawi's Stump Speeches

Ayad Allawi, to whom the United States Coalition Provisional Authority transferred power in Iraq on June 28, is currently in the U.S. making numerous speeches. Here's the way the President sees Allawi's visit:

"This is an important visit because the prime minister will be able to explain clearly to the American people that not only is progress being made, that we will succeed," Mr. Bush said.

"The American people have seen horrible scenes on our TV screens," he added, "and the prime minister will be able to say to them that in spite of the sacrifices being made, in spite of the fact that Iraqis are dying and U.S. troops are dying as well, that there is a will amongst the Iraqi people to succeed."

Has there ever before been a foreign leader--whether democratically elected or appointed as Allawi was--who came to the U.S. in the post-Labor Day "campaign season" to support the incumbent president's re-election campaign?

Last month in the U.K., Prime Minister Tony Blair bowed to pressure from members of the Labour Party and decided not to invite Allawi to speak at Labour's Annual Conference in Brighton next week. The Guardian noted that "former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, was among senior party figures privately urging Mr Blair not to raise tensions over Iraq by inviting someone widely seen as a protegé of the CIA and M16."

[UPDATE: This editorial in today's New York Times also addresses Allawi's visit to the United States.]

A Chilly Diplomatic Reception

When President Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, his tone was less conrontational than in previous visits. Nonetheless, his speech was not well received by the assembled delegates. Here's how Farah Stockman described it in the Boston Globe on Wednesday:

There was no burst of applause during Bush's speech to the General Assembly yesterday, even when he talked about the world's common struggles against poverty and disease. And the applause at the end was subdued.

In contrast, Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe, was applauded when he told the UNGA on Wednesday that "we are now being coerced to accept and believe that a new political-cum-religious doctrine has arisen, namely that 'There is but one political god, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair is his prophet.'"

Mugabe is a thug and the line about Bush and Blair is offensive on several different levels, but the fact that it drew applause while nothing President Bush said was applauded speaks volumes about the international community's disdain for the current leadership of the United States. It's not at all clear that a "global war on terrorism" can be waged effectively in this climate.

(I apologize for the absence of links in this post. My sources were articles found on LexisNexis Academic.)

UNSC Reform

On Tuesday, the German, Brazilian, Japanese, and Indian missions to the United Nations issued a joint statement calling for reform of the U.N. Security Council. The statement reads, in part:

The Security Council must reflect the realities of the international community in the 21st century. It must be representative, legitimate and effective. It is essential that the Security Council includes, on a permanent basis, countries that have the will and the capacity to take on major responsibilities with regard to the maintenance of international peace and security. . . . The Security Council . . . must be expanded in both the permanent and non-permanent categories, including developing and developed countries as new permanent members.

The statement also announced the four countries' support of each other for permanent membership on the Security Council and called for an African state to be given a permanent seat.

On Wednesday, Swiss President Joseph Deiss called for reform of the Security Council in his speech before the U.N. General Assembly. Unlike the joint India-Japan-Germany-Brazil statement, Deiss's speech explicitly tied the need for reform to the Iraq crisis. "In hindsight," he said, "experience shows that actions taken without a mandate which has been clearly defined in a Security Council resolution are doomed to failure."

The procedural obstacles to Security Council reform remain formidable. Nonetheless, it is possible that the Iraq War will mark a turning point in the international campaign to make the United Nations more democratic. Thanks to events in the Security Council in February 2003, there is widespread sentiment that a more democratic Security Council would also be more effective.

Ideology vs. Personality

The test to which I linked yesterday might help you to determine whether your political ideology is closer to that of George W. Bush or John Kerry. Of course, it often seems that there are many Americans who could care less about ideology or the policy positions that political candidates present. To such voters, it's more important to be able to identify with a candidate on a personal level--to feel like he (or she) is someone who would be fun to watch a NASCAR race with. Others--the partisans--buy their candidates off the rack. (No, I'm not talking about those who vote based on sartorial considerations, although such voters certainly exist.) They don't need to check the size or the style as long as they know which is the Democratic rack and which is the Republican rack. Partisans, in other words, are those who need only a party label to decide. In Texas (back when there were still Democrats in Texas, that is), we called the Democratic version of the partisans "yellow dog Democrats." ("He'd vote for an old yellow dog if it were running on the Democratic ticket.") Of course, we shouldn't disparage the partisans. They're often the ones who know best where their own ideology lies and how it lines up with the two-party system in the United States.

Getting back to the personality factor, here's a test designed to assess whether your personality is consistent with your perception of the personality of Bush or Kerry.

(Thanks to my friend and--long ago--former student Karl Urban for sending the link to me from deep in the heart of Texas.)

One more thing: I did take the Political Compass Test and the results were not surprising. My views are very close to those of Marx--Groucho Marx, that is--who said, "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies."

I have to quote one more line from Groucho. (How often am I going to find an excuse to quote him in a blog that is purportedly about international relations?) Here it is: "Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."

How to Get a Job--at the UN

The United Nations operates on a very tight budget and recruits its employees from 191 countries around the world. Consequently, the odds of landing a job in the Secretariat are slim, but speaking English (one of the official languages of the Secretariat) is an advantage. How does one go about finding--and applying for--vacant positions within the UN?

The first step is to go to the UN web site and click on "UN Employment." At present, there are 199 openings listed in 24 different occupational groups. Looking at the "Human Rights" group (8 vacancies), one would find positions at the P3 and P4 levels (requiring advanced degrees and/or significant work experience in the field of human rights), all but one of which would be in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Center.

For lower-level positions (P2) requiring an undergraduate degree only, there is a National Competitive Recruitment Examination (NCRE). This will be offered in the United States next February (but the application deadline has already passed). The NCRE is in two parts: a General Exam to test basic writing skills and lasting about one hour and a Specialized Exam to test substantive knowledge of the position being applied for and lasting about three hours and forty-five minutes. For human rights positions, the sample Specialized Exam includes these questions:

• Describe the role and mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
• Explain the legal differences between a declaration, a covenant, and a convention adopted by the United Nations organs.
• List the six principal (UN) international human rights treaties currently in force.
• Recent years have brought important developments in strengthening the judicial enforcement of international human rights and humanitarian law. Name three (3) such developments since the 1990s.
• One aspect of the Secretary-General’s Reform programme of 1997 called for integrating the human rights programme into a broad range of the organization’s activities, including in the peacekeeping, development and humanitarian areas. Discuss the objectives of this process and provide three examples of how it is being accomplished.
• Describe the “Global Compact” and discuss its importance for human rights.

Internships are described here.

Beyond Left vs. Right

Here's an interesting test of political ideology--one that combines the familiar left-right spectrum with an authoritarian-libertarian spectrum. You're welcome to use the comment area to brag about your score if you wish.

(I haven't taken the test yet, so don't ask me about my score.)

[UPDATE: My apologies for omitting the link to the test. Thanks to mquest for pointing out my mistake.]

Islam Deported from U.S.

(You might as well skip this post if you're under 40.)

Here's an interesting item from today's New York Times:

The Department of Homeland Security ordered a United Airlines jet flying from London to Washington rerouted to Bangor, Me., on Tuesday afternoon so it could intercept a passenger, Yusuf Islam, the musician formerly known as Cat Stevens, two government officials said.

The story goes on to note that Cat (Can I still call him "Cat"?), a British citizen, is to be deported. (How about deporting Ted Nugent, too?)

Cat is not quoted in the NYT article, which is a shame because I can imagine him having some interesting things to say.

• "And all this time I thought I was being followed by a moonshadow!"
• "I knew I should have taken the peace train!"
• "Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world."

Any other ideas about what Cat might have said?