Holmes was later asked by reporters to clarify his estimate. He said he was "not trying to give an exact figure" and described 300,000 as a "reasonable extrapolation" from the 2006 estimate for the current total number of people who have died in Darfur of disease, hunger or in combat.
Holmes said the original 200,000 figure was based on a 2-year-old study by the World Health Organization. He said there were no plans now for a new scientific study to determine the precise number of deaths in Darfur caused by the conflict.
Asked if the figure could be even higher than 300,000, Holmes said: "I'm trying to be reasonable, conservative."
What if China was to throw a party and the only people to show up were the 'Sacred Flame Protection Police', also known as street thugs with a badge? It's a great strategy to help show the world the 'new' China though it does suggest the communications team might need to be modernized. You can put a nice blue track suit on a hooligan but they're still a hooligan underneath.
As middle class people in wealthy countries such as the US and Europe already know, the cost of food has skyrocketed in the last few years for a variety of reasons. Sure, some of that has to do with crop failures related to bad conditions though the more serious problem has been related to diverting food to biofuels (where the money is better) and the increasing cost of fuel, that has risen dramatically since the war mongering and invasion of Iraq.
For decades Republicans in the US have preached a tough-love approach to foreign aid but while this simplistic response appeals to a certain crowd in America it ignores the realities of the world around us. For example, a substantial percentage of the population across southern Africa eats mealy-meal, which is cooked corn meal. If they are lucky, maybe they will be able to afford a sauce to splash on this. This is what people eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner if they can even afford three meals. This is it. All of the extras that we're used to just don't exist as an option on a regular basis. With over one billion people around the world surviving on $1 per day, cost increases for basics such as corn and wheat have an enormous impact. It's really time to step back and look at where we are and how we came to this situation.
There are no shortages of media reports about the US coming around and joining the rest of the world at the Bali conference on climate change. To the degree that the administration recognized the problem and said action needed to be taken, there's not much more here. We have seen Bush the last few years give plenty of lip service but it's a different story when it comes to real actions. Maybe there has been real change and we'll all be shocked at the new Bush. Then again, have we ever once witnessed any movement like this before?
Bush has one more year to go and his entire game plan on everything is to run out the clock. Whether it's the war, the subprime problems or the economy in general it is always about pushing the issue out to the next president. It's nice to see that the US wasn't the class idiot yet again at an international conference, but when I see results over talk, then I will start to believe there is an updated position on climate change.
It's difficult to lift yourself up with your bootstraps if you don't have any bootstraps or they're under water. As an American or European it's hard to understand or imagine what it's like to live on under $2 per day though millions upon millions in world do precisely that. When I look at the billions blown on Wall Street or the black hole of spending in Iraq, I wonder why it's so difficult for wealthy nations to step up and help those who are in need, at home or abroad. The people that I've met in poor communities work just as hard as anyone else, but are often stuck due to circumstances well beyond their control.
Without the money, the panel found, a warmer world "could stall and then reverse human development" in the countries where 2.6 billion people live on $2 a day or less.
Scientists have reported that temperatures rose an average 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, bringing the prospect of a century of extreme weather, rising seas, widening drought and disease and harm to fisheries, forests and farmland.
According to development officials, the unfortunate consequences include women and young girls walking further to collect water in the Horn of Africa, people erecting bamboo flood shelters on stilts in the delta of the Ganges River, and others planting mangroves to protect themselves against storm surges in the delta of the Mekong River.
"These impacts ... go unnoticed in financial markets and in the measurement of world gross domestic product (GDP)," the panel's report said. "But increased exposure to drought, to more intense storms, to floods and environmental stress is holding back the efforts of the world's poor to build a better life for themselves and their children."
Mark Goldberg posts an interesting discussion with James Traub about the role (and possible expanded role) of the UN in Iraq. I'm often more skeptical of the UN than many of my political/ideological peers, but I think it's also fair to say that one of the reasons the UN sometimes struggles with its missions is that it mostly gets called in when a situation is damn near hopeless. That interferes, obviously, with a group's winning percentage.
(I should also note that my doubts about the UN often have been mitigated or alleviated by reading Goldberg's excellent postings at UN Dispatch; there are plenty of UN actions that seem questionable at first blush but are, in fact, perfectly reasonable and productive when explained -- like this, for example -- and if international relations/politics/institutions are of interest to you, well, there's another one for the blogroll.)
Anyway, since I don't think any external actor can do much in Iraq (save perhaps Iran), I don't think the UN is likely to turn things around. However, to be fair, should the UN have more involvement, the goal wouldn't be to make things all better, but to mitigate some of the fallout and atrocities -- a job at which the US is failing. As Traub says,
It is the melancholy destiny of the UN to be called on in the most desperate situations when everyone else has thrown up their hands or nobody else cares. Here is a case where people care desperately, but there doesn't seem to be any path to success. So, this is one of the besetting problems of the UN: it may be called on, then fail, then be blamed. But you can't say "we are not going to try because it will look bad if we fail." That's not how the UN thinks.
Ultimately the US will have to work with international institutions -- and Iraqis themselves -- to mitigate whatever problems can still be reasonably addressed. Fear of looking bad is an unconscionable reason for not doing the right thing -- however popular that idea might be among Republican presidential candidates, for example -- and the absence (or at least reduction) of such fear in non-governmental organizations is a reason for hope that they'll have some beneficial impact in the mid- and long-term.
...and looks like a duck, it's a duck. The truth always hurts for this administration.
The U.S. government on Wednesday rejected a U.N. report that said the use of private security guards like those involved in the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians amounted to a new form of mercenary activity.
The report by a five-member panel of independent U.N. human rights experts said the contractors were performing military duties even though they were hired to be security guards. The killing of 17 civilians in Baghdad last month by Blackwater USA guards underscores the risks of using such contractors, said panel chairman, Jose Luis Gomez del Prado of Spain.
It's a small step but still very positive. China dives in to the international PR game and does the right thing.
China turned against the Burmese government last night and supported a UN security council statement rebuking the military regime for its suppression of peaceful protests, and demanding the release of all political prisoners.
The security council statement, which also called for "genuine dialogue" with the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, marked the first time that Beijing had agreed to UN criticism of the junta.
The statement did not threaten sanctions, but the significance of its unanimous support by all 15 members of the security council would not have been lost on Burma's generals, who had hitherto been able to count on China, a neighbour and key trading partner, to block UN censure.
The days of mass protests seem to be an an end, with the dictatorship enforcing its power through violence and mass arrests. The UN is talking though the junta leadership continues to be uninterested in speaking with the UN. Realistically the only countries that can have much impact would be China and India and considering China's own modern history with internal dissent I can't imagine them taking a firm stand against the actions of the junta. India though has been disappointingly quiet, probably afraid to risk business being lost to China - a local competitor - if they speak out. That may very well be true, though it is still disappointing.
I was reading about the global warming discussions at the UN yesterday, and I couldn't help but wonder, why on earth does this meeting matter? The major nations aren't interested in doing anything real, and in particular the US still has over a year left of an administration that's allergic to environmental progress.
Fortunately, Mark Goldberg helpfully explains the relevance and the context:
[T]he significance of today's meetings needs to be understood in the longer term. In 2015, Kyoto will expire. As the thinking goes, it will take two years to negotiate a successor to Kyoto, then another four years for member states to actually ratify the treaty.
In December, the process of negotiating a successor to Kyoto will kick off with a meeting in Bali. This meeting will be largely technical in nature, i.e. what sort of carbon emissions targets should be achieved and how to set up a global carbon credit market. The purpose of today's meetings was not to talk about those technical issues, but to inject some desperately needed political will into the Bali meeting.
So it's going to take a while to get this thing rolling, and even longer to get ratification, and it's important to start building toward that all now despite apparent intransigence. Well, then. That does make sense.
A very good move in the right direction by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. There is plenty of hard work and diplomacy ahead but even getting to this stage required an enormous effort, starting back during the tenure of Kofi Annan. It would be nice to see China be more constructive in situations such as this but then again, the US government is often lacking as well with friendly countries who offer rich natural resources. Expanding power internationally cuts both ways, which China will discover, though they are already highly unpopular with the population in countries such as Zimbabwe where they continue to prop up a tumbling dictatorship.
