The alternative UN

What kind of new worldwide organisation could be established that would truly defend humankind’s common resources and limit the major powers? Here are some suggestions for further debate.

By Monique Chemillier-Gendreau

THE reform of the United Nations is an old problem (1). UN bureaucracy, grossly inflated over the years, is widely thought inefficient. The Security Council, the main UN peacemaking body, still dominated by the victors of the second world war, has not lived up to its mandate. It has allowed conflicts to proliferate and intervened arbitrarily. The peace dividend promised at the end of the cold war was an illusion. Arms sales have soared again because the major powers chose to militarise their economies. Peacekeeping missions have developed exponentially, often leading to fiascos (2). President George Bush’s unilateral decision to invade Iraq removed a dictatorship only to plunge that country into chaos and violence, further confirming the helplessness of the UN.

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How Americans View U.S. Foreign Policy

Results of new national tracking survey from Public Agenda

When Americans were asked to name the most important global problems facing the United States, Iraq and terrorism were the two top concerns. Foreign nations' negative image of this country ranked number three. These and other findings, released jointly by Public Agenda and Foreign Affairs magazine, are part of the new Public Agenda Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index.
The survey also reveals that American thinking about U.S. relations with the Islamic world is a disquieting mix of high anxiety, growing uncertainly about current policy, and virtually no consensus about what else the country might do.

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Will the Prime Minister rise to the occasion?

The Daily Star, 17 September, 2005
Brigadier General Shamsuddin Ahmed (Retd)

The news is indeed very disconcerting for Bangladesh. Sixteen US senators and representatives, both Republicans and Democrats, including Senator Edward Kennedy and Senator John Kerry, are reported to have jointly urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to advise President George W Bush to raise the issue of political violence in Bangladesh at the ongoing United Nations World Summit.

They have referred specifically to bomb attacks on Sheikh Hasina and British High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury, assassination of former finance minister SAMS Kibria and the recent hundreds of coordinated bomb blasts across the country on August 17 as events illustrating the depth of the ever-rising problem of political violence in Bangladesh.
The worst comment was that the possibility of Bangladesh becoming a failed state and a base of operations for international terrorist organisations should be part of discussions at the summit. Whether or not President Bush will raise the Bangladesh issue at the summit is a matter of the US government. But the fact that the political violence in Bangladesh, particularly the bombing spree that has gripped the country during the rule of the present coalition government, is no longer an internal issue of the country, and is being talked about by the international community, especially by the lone superpower of the world, is a matter which is deeply worrisome for the people of Bangladesh. A country liberated through a bloody war and sacrifice of millions of people 34 years ago is now being branded as a likely failed state and a base of operations for international terrorist organisations thanks to the ineptitude and utter failure of this government as well as all previous governments to rein in the rising religious militancy in the country.

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The UN: Scrap it or mend it?

Copyright 2005 New Statesman Ltd. ,

September 12, 2005 BYLINE: Dan Plesch

Scrap it says Tariq Ali.

An unredeemable tool of American policyThe agenda for the super-summit of world leaders in New York should contain just one item: the UN's funeral rites. All talk of reform should be abandoned, because the real choice on the table today is not between the present mess and a genuinely democratic body but between this mess and an interventionist agency that can serve as the military instrument of the new world order, just as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation are used on the economic front. That is what the United States and Britain want. Far better, in such circumstances, that the UN be given a decent burial and the "humanitarian interventionists" be left to find some other structure to wage their wars.

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Bangladesh: Seize the moment, celebrate the victory

HOLIDAY, 02 September, 2005

NM Harun

The rainbow is short-lived, but its beauty lingers in the beholder's mind. The August 29 High Court judgment pronouncing Martial Law and the Fifth Amendment unconstitutional is a brilliant rainbow in the dark, cloudy skyscape of the chequered statehood of the Bengali nation. The Supreme Court has since stayed the verdict and the government will prefer an appeal against it within two months. Whatever may eventually happen to the HC's verdict, it is a loud reiteration of the supremacy of the people's will -- the victory of republicanism, democracy and constitutionalism over the brute force of the military, and of politics over conspiracies. So seize the moment, and celebrate the victory while the verdict remains alive, albeit in a state of suspended animation -- at least as an icon from which to draw inspiration for the future struggles of the people.

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UN Reform ?

Copyright 2005 The Washington Post,

September 2, 2005 BYLINE: Colum Lynch, Washington Post Staff Writer.

The Bush administration has accused senior U.N. officials of "manipulating the truth" by suggesting that the United States is backsliding on commitments made over the past five years to increase foreign assistance to the world's poor.Ric Grenell, the spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, wrote in an e-mail to the world body's top spokesmen that a recent U.N. press statement indicating that President Bush had endorsed a list of aid targets, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), reflected a "bias" against the United States that he said was a "deep cause for concern." The remarks came one week after John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told U.N. delegates for the first time in writing that the Bush administration never agreed to support the goals, which call for increased funding to drastically reduce poverty, halt the spread of HIV/AIDS and eradicate a host of deadly diseases by 2015

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The Diary of Amal Salman

washingtonpost.com
The U.S. Invasion, March - April 2003

Friday, September 2, 2005; 5:30 PM

Amal Salman is an Iraqi girl living in Baghdad who turned 14 during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Washington Post staff writer Anthony Shadid first visited the Salman family in March 2003. During the war and the ensuing conflict, Amal recorded her family's experiences in her diary. She shared copies of her journal with Shadid. These are translated excerpts of Amal's diary.

Monday, March 17, 2003

In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate.

My name is Amal. I have a happy family made up of nine persons: three brothers, who are Ali, a soldier in Mosul; Mohammed, an engraver; and Mahmoud, a student. There are five sisters: Fatima, who helps my mother at home; Zainab; Amal; and my twin sisters, Duaa and Hibba. I am very proud of my mother because she is a great person, who works to bring us food because my father died when we were young, back in Ramadan in 1996 in a car accident. We moved to an apartment on Feb. 1, 2003. We feel very sad having had to move from our house, which we loved, and in which we were raised and spent some beautiful years. Now we are in a nice apartment. . . . We do not want war in Iraq, the land of civilization and prophets. War will be torture. You can see sadness in the eyes of children, and fear. My mother is crying, afraid for us. War separates people, the people we love, and we are worried about the war and the destruction that comes with it. We are supplying ourselves with water and scared that water and electric power will be cut off. Duaa and Hibba are praying to God all the time, to avert war. Fatima feels hopeful that war will not occur. At 8:30, my mom baked a lot of bread for us, so that we will not be short during the war because bakeries will be closed. We keep asking why is there war in the world? Why? . . . Praise to God for everything, but I wish there wouldn't be a war.

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