That decision reflects the majority international view that the Palestinian people deserve to be represented as a state at the international level. Murray McCully is yet to give a credible explanation for NZ’s abstention from the vote.

In a fit of pique, the US has now decreed it will not be delivering its UNESCO dues this year ($60m, 22% of the budget).  Graciously enough, it has decided to remain a member – after all, it needs to be there to remain relevant.  More graciously still, UNESCO member states have elected it to the Executive Board.

The US claims that two Congressional Acts forbid US funding to any agency which ‘formally accords the Palestinian Liberation Organisation the same standing as member states’.

Actually, the Israel-Palestine issue has moved on from the early ‘90s when these Acts were passed.. The PLO long ago rescinded its opposition to the critical UN resolutions 242 and 338, and formally recognised Israel’s right to exist.  Today, the formal entity is the Palestinian National Authority.

Only irresponsible or arrogant states withhold dues as a sign of displeasure at a majority decision at the United Nations. In every case, the same state returns to the fold later. In 1984 the US and the UK both withdrew from UNESCO (over the New World Information Order, a proposal in the 1980s to make global media representation more equitable).  Both subsequently re-joined, achieving nothing other than losing face.

Palestine will surely apply for membership with further UN agencies such as the World Health Organisation. How many essential international agencies does the US plan to withdraw funding from, and thus destabilise, over the state of Palestine?

The US and Israel are correct that an enduring peaceful settlement of the Israel-Palestine issue can only be the product of patient negotiation.  But a large majority of states (107) believe the time is right for Palestine to be a fully sovereign state – as a necessary part of that peace process.  A small minority (14) think not.

What divine intuition, what excessive confidence bordering on hubris, prompts one of these states to believe that its views, should prevail?

What brand of global leadership is this?

The Global Day of Action Against Military Spending is being marked today, April 12th. Last year the world military budget was US$1,630 billion, with America well ahead of other nations. It spent US$698 billion, six times its nearest rival China on US$114 billion. Adding to the scandal, the US spends 20 times as much on its military as it does on economic aid to other nations.

If only a fraction of global military spending was diverted into achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) we’d be there fairly quickly. The world has made some progress towards MDG Goal One: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. The number of people living under the poverty line of $1.25 a day has declined from 1.8 billion to 1.4 billion. But on the other hand, it is estimated the recent economic crisis has pushed an extra 64 million people into extreme poverty. And around 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from mainly preventable causes – lack of access to adequate food, clean water and basic medicines.

This imbalance between military spending and development assistance is hard to overcome because the US war industry is now so big, and has so much lobbying impact in Washington, that no US president dares to cut the Defence budget.

By the way, New Zealand allocated NZ$2.85 billion to Defence for 2010/11 fiscal year. New Zealand ranks 30th in terms of per capita military expenditure which is above both the global median and global average. Our NZ aid budget did not do as well, with only NZ$525 million allocated for 2010/11.

The first question McCully and Mapp should ask the British ministers is “Are you going to challenge the United States on its resort to cyberwarfare?”

The New York Times says American and Israeli experts have inserted a sophisticated virus into the computer system governing the operation of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme.

There should be no tolerance of cyberwarfare, which can be just as destructive as any other warfare. Also, it can spin out of control, once several governments get in to it. Any government attacked will think they have the right to respond in kind.

It is also now starting to be used against NGOs, as in the recent denial of service attacks on Wikileaks sites.

The other thing Murray McCully and Wayne Mapp should do is resist any pressure from the Brits to keep the SAS on in Afghanistan beyond the March 2011 planned withdrawal date. The botched December 24 raid in Kabul, where two Afghan security guards were killed, shows that the continued SAS presence is not helping our reputation among the Afghan people.

Waihopai’s main task is to intercept global communications for the US National Security Agency (NSA). The Wikileaks documents inform us that the US has been blatantly violating international conventions with its detailed spying on UN figures, from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon down.

The information sought on UN leaders included personal passwords and encryption keys, credit card numbers, and “biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives”. Maybe Waihopai has helped the US get some of these details.

A lot of the information sought was clearly to advance American foreign policy aims, not New Zealand’s. One question posed is why should Waihopai be collecting information for the US on “plans by UN special rapporteurs to press for potentially embarrassing investigations into the US treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay”, to quote a Guardian summary of US directives contained in the documents.

The Guardian says the “operation targeted at the UN appears to have involved all of Washington’s main intelligence agencies”, presumably including our GCSB’s Big Brother, the NSA. The secret “national human intelligence collection directive” was sent by Hillary Clinton in July 2009 to 33 embassies and consulates, presumably including Wellington. We can assume it was implemented by the US Embassy staff here, particularly those with FBI, CIA and NSA assignments.

A lot of the documents are embarrassing governments, particularly in the Arab world, by showing they were more supportive of US foreign policy than they were admitting to their own people. I wonder if any of the Wikileaks documents shows this also applies in New Zealand? We’ll find out soon enough.

 … and waiting for our world leaders to catch up

A major breakthrough has just occurred in the movement for peace and justice.  It appears to have been totally overlooked in the NZ media, to date.

At the review conference of the International Criminal Court that wrapped up in Kampala last weekend, agreement was reached to include aggression as a justiciable crime within the Court’s jurisdiction.

This will be the fourth crime for the ICC, to be added to three others which the Court has exercised since 2002.  Aggression was anticipated in the 1998 Rome Statute, but agreement was still required on two issues – a legal definition and the relationship between the Court’s judicial competence and the UN Security Council’s political competence.

Beyond all expectations, the parties reached agreement on both points.  So, aggression is coming down the track as an individual leadership crime.  If Bush, Blair and Howard had waltzed into Iraq in 2023 rather than 2003, two of them, if not three, would probably have found themselves in The Hague.  So would have Helen Clark (read John Key) had NZ joined them.  As it happened, Clark got it right.

Currently 111 countries are members of the Court – strong evidence of the human yearning to weave a fabric of law at the global level today.  Many leading states – Britain and France, Germany and Japan, Brazil and Argentina, South Africa and Zambia, are members.  

This leaves 81 states still to join.   Major powers remain outside – the US, China, Russia, India and Pakistan.

Why do some major powers not join the Court?  Why do they oppose, as the US did in Kampala (as an ‘active’ observer), the inclusion of aggression?   The short answer is that, over time, most of them will accede.  But US ‘exceptionalism’ is kicking in here, and may endure, even over time.

The issue is the most acute, and most accurate, barometer of the interface between power and law at the global level.  It strikes at the heart of national security policy in an age of transition to global security. Take the United States.  Historically, the US has been schizoid between international power and law, having led the charge to create both the League of Nations and United Nations, yet declining to join the League and often flouting the UN. 

In 1945 the international community made aggression an illegal state action under the UN Charter.  In 2010 it is making aggression an individual leadership crime.  No wonder the US pulled out all stops in Kampala to ensure that the crime of aggression will not to apply to them. 

See the explanation by the US State Department here.  

 The US stance has deep political roots but in the logic of international law, it commits an internal contradiction.  The below by statement by State Dept’s legal adviser Harold Koh tells it all.

[T]he outcome protected our vital interests. The court cannot exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression without a further decision to take place sometime after January 1^st, 2017. The prosecutor cannot charge nationals of non-state parties, including U.S. nationals, with a crime of aggression. No U.S. national can be prosecuted for aggression so long as the U.S. remains a non-state party. And if we were to become a state party, we’d still have the option to opt out from having our nationals prosecuted for aggression. So we ensure total protection for our Armed Forces and other U.S. nationals going forward.   

Explicitly, for the first time, the US has stated that it must insist on retaining the ‘political freedom’ to commit what a court might see as aggression.

Of course the US has forfeited that right as a state responsibility under the UN Charter.  But under the Charter it retains the power of veto to preclude Security Council action against it in the event it (might have) committed aggression.  So it is hell-bent, so to speak, on preserving that same ‘right’ vis-à-vis the Court for its President, as commander-in-chief.

As the middle powers continue to strengthen the rule of global law, in the absence leadership from the US and other major powers, Washington faces the dilemma of coming to the civilized party late.  One day, the American fear of being prosecuted for committing aggression will be replaced by a confidence in promoting the legitimate use of force.

It is a Twenty20 cricket match, played last Thursday, between Afghanistan and the  United States of America.

The teams played in good spirit, despite the underlying politics and war.  Afghanistan won by 28 runs, and subsequently defeated Ireland to qualify for the world Twenty20 cricket championship.

Big ups to the Afghan cricketers for such a momentous achievement coming from a country where they risk  facing bullets and/or missiles at any moment.

Oops, let’s think about this for a moment…

Bugger, I just recalled there are resources like oil and land and minerals and water involved.  Things that are up for grabs, if you have the military strength to acquire them.  Things that run out sometime soon if we don’t conserve them.

President Obama and Prime Minister Brown, take note!  And I hope the Indian and Pakistani and Afghan political leaders take note  too.  Oh, and John Key as well.

What a pity it is that international disputes cannot be resolved by  friendly games of cricket such as the one Afghanistan and the USA just played, rather than protracted wars in which many innocent people die.

And, in the spirit of cricket, the resolution of the dispute should leave the loser with sufficient resources to play again another day.   Anything else is just not cricket.

The Guardian has a great article on the video, who’s behind it and why it is so ripe for a spoof. I’m tempted to do one myself!

In a slick attempt to undermine the US Environmental Protection Agency’s recent ruling that CO2 should now be classified as a pollutant because rising levels of the gas in the atmosphere will “endanger public health or welfare”, a former oil industry executive has stumped up some of his cash to pay for these adverts to be shown in Montana and New Mexico. The ultimate aim of the advert, though, is to derail the forthcoming vote in the Senate on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which now appears as if it might even impact on vital UN climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

In not so plain English? It’s a simple case of political brinksmanship.

Dear Big oil,

If you kill our climate change bill, we’ll act on the EPA’s declaration of CO2 as a pollutant and achieve the same aims of the ETS through regulation.

Love,

Barack

Dear Barack,

We’ve got more money than you.

Love,

Big oil

I look forward to the outcome of this particular battle. Rumour has it that the Senate version of the climate bill is even tougher than the one that went through the House. We’ll find out over night.

There is more relevant Christmas themed Captain Capitalism here.

“Don’t vote for the lesser of two evils vote, vote for what is good.”

Covered by the new rules: ground beef, chicken, pork, veal, steak, lamb and goat, along with fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, macadamia nuts, pecans and peanuts.

And it looks like Americans are getting ready for a possible trade agreement with us too:

“If you know that peppers from Mexico might have salmonella, then maybe you would say, ‘I want to buy peppers from California.’ Or maybe you would want to know that your food has a smaller carbon footprint. You can buy apples from Washington instead of New Zealand.”

Consumer groups there are unhappy that the law does not go far enough. For instance it exempts many processed foods such as spam. That’s definitely not far enough, but at least it’s somewhere.

Dr Russel Norman: Will the Minister publicly guarantee that he will not sign any trade deal with the United States that undermines Pharmac’s role as a monopoly purchaser of pharmaceuticals on behalf of all New Zealanders—yes or no?

Hon ANNETTE KING: As with all our free-trade agreements, in order for New Zealand to be able to agree to any outcome the agreement overall must be able to pass the test of being in our national interest. Those issues will be discussed and we will look at our national interest.

There’s not much ‘yes’ or ‘no’ happening in that answer. So he tries again:

Dr Russel Norman: Given the Minister’s previous answer, where she refused to publicly guarantee to protect Pharmac, will the Minister publicly guarantee not to loosen the current rules around genetic engineering as part of a trade deal with the United States—yes or no?

Hon ANNETTE KING: I repeat: as with all our free-trade agreements, in order for New Zealand to be able to agree to any outcome, the agreement overall must be able to pass the test of being in our national interest. Those are issues that we will look at.

 I worry that Labour thinks that concern about genetic engineering will eventually just fade away then it can change the rules without much of a public process.  That’s unlikely to happen through a public policy process. But doing it through a trade negotiation would be highly undemocratic so I hope MFAT does not go down that road.

The LA Times notes:

Initially confined mostly to Texas and New Mexico, the federal recall of the tainted produce went national over the weekend, and supermarkets across the country, including those in L.A., have removed the three suspect varieties from their shelves. On Monday, McDonald’s stopped adding a slice of tomato to hamburgers served in America, and the Los Angeles Unified School District “indefinitely suspended” serving uncooked tomatoes in its cafeterias.

But the most interesting part of the infectious tomato story is told in the rest of the LA Times article, which asks why are Americans being poisoned by tomatoes in June, months after tomato season:

For one thing, tomatoes and tree fruit grown and shipped in this fashion seldom come even remotely close to tasting the way a tomato or a peach is supposed to taste. More important for the purposes of this discussion, the same marvel of efficiency that makes it possible to pick a tomato in Guatemala and sell it fresh in a market in Bangor, Maine, a few days later creates a system that’s just as good at distributing disease as it is produce.

It’s worth reading the whole article.  While you can’t blame food poisoning on out of season foods with many miles under their belt, this scare is another symptom that our food system as whole is not as healthy or as effective as it could be if we were more locally self sufficient.

Photo Credit: Andrew Baron

And this week we have this helpful suggestion from Germany:

The scientists, Fritz Scholz and Ulrich Hasse from the University of Greifswald, start with a common idea: Planting forests, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But instead of letting those trees stand (or worse burning or letting them decay so that the carbon is released to the atmosphere) the scientists have a novel suggestion. Landfill them.

The theory aims to replace back into the earth all the carbon we keep digging up in the form of coal and oil, by burying trees.  But sadly, it’s a little more complicated than it first sounds:

One little problem with this miracle solution: The world would have to plant 3.8 million square miles of forest every year to counteract current global carbon dioxide emissions. That’s bigger than the size of the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii).

Now who wants to tell America?

And the scientists themselves point out that it’s equivalent to all virgin forests lost in the 20th century.

All of which raises the question, why are we still chopping all those trees down?

US President George Bush has announced an ‘ambitious‘ climate change programme to stop increasing carbon emission in 2025. And, after that, the US is going to start reducing emissions. That’s only 17 years and somewhat more than 100 billion metric tonnes of CO². We’ll probably be onto our 3rd Bush president by then.

The Easterlin paradox

New research in the United States is challenging the Easterlin paradox which argues that rich people tend to be much happier than poor people but that , rich societies tend not to be happier than poor societies. I’ve written about the Easterlin paradox before, and it is no surprise that it would be the subject of controversy with proponents of unsustainable economic growth.

PR in the PRC

Open Democracy has an article on the world’s perception of Chinese human rights abuses and whether that perception could be improved by China presenting itself differently with a ‘better public relations response’.

The tragicomic Olympic-torch tour presents the world with a serious problem. While the west has focused on the chaotic and even amusing aspects (French police on roller-blades, Chinese torch-guards in dark shades on a cloudy day), in China the iconic image is of the young female paralympic fencer Jin Jing struggling to hold the torch from her wheelchair while a grimacing free-Tibet protestor attempts to wrest it from her grasp. As with the Tibetan protests generally, people in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the world at large see the events of the torch tour in radically different ways.

Bamboo bikes

Righto. All you carbon emitting cyclists, here’s the next step in on the path to carbon neutrality – bamboo bikes:

Today Calfee Design, based in La Selva Beach, Calif., sells the bamboo bikes, whose frames weigh just four pounds, for $2,695 each. They account for more than a quarter of its $1 million in annual sales.

“Serious bikers like them because they’re high-performance frames,” says Calfee, 45. “Environmentally conscious people like them because making them burns less carbon.”

I wonder if he makes bamboo skateboards?

Gossip

The Green Party has finally made it into a gossip column! And it’s about saving dolphins rather than hairdos or affairs with TV presenters.

None of those three are anywhere close to the US$2,649,725 in declared donations that George Bush received in 2004.  So I guess there is still a bit more money yet to make its way from the pipelines into the campaign coffers.  Either that or Bush must have had a special relationship with those in the corporate levels of the oil business?

In New Zealand there are no records one way or the other as to how much oil companies might have donated secretly during the 2005 election to trusts like the Waitamata Trust.

So, on Tuesday we get news that the FBI wants to create a giant biometrics database which it has dubbed the ‘Server in the Sky‘. This will store global information about iris scans, fingerprints and palm prints of millions of criminals and, importantly, suspects. The FBI, along with police in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand have reportedly formed a working group, the International Information Consortium, to plan their strategy around the ‘Server in the Sky’.

Now the important thing to remember here is that this system will include biometric information on everyone that the US suspects of terrorism or significant criminal links, not just actual bona fide mafia dons or Oklahoma bombers.

As Nick Clegg writes in the Guardian;

Biometrics are invaluable, but they are not 100% failsafe: nothing is. Remember: it’s the US terrorism operations that put Yusuf Islam (the musician formerly known as Cat Stevens) on a “no-fly” list.

Keith noted his concern that NZ may police may support this project yesterday:

People who have committed no crime could be prevented from coming to New Zealand on the basis of FBI ‘suspicions’, which may well have no foundation. We know the Bush administration has an incredibly broad definition of ‘the bad guys’. This can include genuine political dissenters, critics of US foreign policy or entirely innocent people caught up in cases of mistaken identity.