The Scotsman has a good article with questions and answers in regard to the conflict and international law.

Katrina is all but forgotten in the minds of Americans. A country that donates billions of dollars to victims of natural disasters elsewhere in the world and we neglect to take care of our own. It’s mindboggling to me. And I’m not speaking of just our government. Individuals. My own Mother said to me that she thought Orlando went downhill when victims of Katrina came there and never went back. I said well God help you if you ever get displaced and are left homeless and helpless. I must say, I have no doubt she got this “talking point” from my heartless Republican sister, who I refer to as Bethzilla. But I’m sure many other Americans feel that way. How did we come to be like this? Something else, while I’m on the subject. With the economy in the dumper the way it is, I asked my Mom if there was alot of crime during the depression. If people stole from one another due to desperation. If the crime rate went up drastically. She said…..no, people helped one another. What do you think would become of us if we suffered a depression in this day and age? I think it would be quite ugly. Just my opinion.

A United Nations official who has toured parts of Louisiana and Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina says the thousands of victims of the storm resemble poor people displaced by natural disasters in other parts of the world.

“Whether you’re displaced in a rich country or a poor country, what remains the same is you need to get the help, the assistance of the authorities, of the communities, to be able to restart a normal life, and the people I have met are not there yet,” said Walter Kalin, the UN secretary general’s representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons.

Kalin spoke Wednesday, a day when he also saw hard-hit areas of the two states. He met Tuesday with evacuees in Houston.

The United Nations’ human rights committee has been critical of the Bush administration’s efforts to help people displaced by Katrina, particularly those without the financial means to rebuild.

More at Yahoo

I hate these things and think they should be banned. Why is it all the sudden cops can’t do their jobs without them? They’ve tasered kids, grandmas, people in wheelchairs……. it’s ridiculous.

A United Nations committee said Friday that use of Taser weapons can be a form of torture, in violation of the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

Use of the electronic stun devices by police has been marked with a sudden rise in deaths - including four men in the United States and two in Canada within the last week.

Canadian authorities are taking a second look at them, and in the United States, there is a wave of demands to BAN them.

The U.N. Committee Against Torture referred Friday to the use of TaserX26 weapons which Portuguese police has acquired. An expert had testified to the committee that use of the weapons had “proven risks of harm or death.

More at CBS News

By JUSTIN BERGMAN
Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki warned the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday that the continued flow of weapons, suicide bombers and terrorism funding into his country would result in “disastrous consequences” for the region and the world.

Al-Maliki, who met with President Bush Tuesday, urged the international community and countries in the region to support Iraq’s national reconciliation process to rid terrorism from the country and bring peace to the region.

“National reconciliation is stronger than the weapons of terrorism,” he said. “Today we feel optimistic that countries of the region realize the danger of the terrorist attacks against Iraq, that it is not in their interest for Iraq to be weak.”

Al-Maliki said his country had reduced sectarian killings and brought stability to some regions, such as Anbar province in the west. He said thousands of displaced families have been able to return to their homes.

He said Iraq also has hundreds of political parties active within 20 political alliances; more than 6,000 civil organizations; hundreds of newspapers and magazines and 40 local and satellite TV stations. But terrorists are targeting this “new Iraq,” he said.

“Terrorism kills civilians, journalists, actors, thinkers and professionals. It attacks universities, marketplaces and libraries. It blows up mosques and churches and destroys the infrastructure of state institutions,” al-Maliki said.

read more HERE

By Rick Perlstein
Campaign for America’s Future

Here’s a big question that I want to start addressing in upcoming posts: what is conservative rule doing to our nation’s soul? How is it rewiring our hearts and minds? What kind of damage are they doing to the American character? And can we ever recover?

So: what is the American character? Hard to say, of course. But I daresay we know it when we see it. Let me put before you an illustrative example: one week in September of 1959, when, much like one week in September of 2007, American soil supported a visit by what many, if not most Americans agreed was the most evil and dangerous man on the planet.

Nikita Khrushchev disembarked from his plane at Andrews Air Force Base to a 21-gun salute and a receiving line of 63 officials and bureaucrats, ending with President Eisenhower. He rode 13 miles with Ike in an open limousine to his guest quarters across from the White House. Then he met for two hours with Ike and his foreign policy team. Then came a white-tie state dinner. (The Soviets then put one on at the embassy for Ike.) He joshed with the CIA chief about pooling their intelligence data, since it probably all came from the same people-then was ushered upstairs to the East Wing for a leisurely gander at the Eisenhowers’ family quarters.

[...]

Had America suddenly succumbed to a fever of weak-kneed appeasement? Had the general running the country-the man who had faced down Hitler!-proven himself what the John Birch Society claimed he was: a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy?

No. Nikita Khrushchev simply visited a nation that had character. That was mature, well-adjusted. A nation confident we were great. We had our neuroses, to be sure-plenty of them.

But look now what we have lost. Now when a bad guy crosses our threshhold, America becomes a pants-piddling mess.

Iran’s president speaks at a great American university. That university’s president, in the act of introducing his lecture, whines like a baby bereft of his pacifier that his guest is a big meany poopy-head. City Council members, too, and a rabbi, make like ten-year-olds, giving their press conference in front of a sign with his face struck through and the legend “Go To Hell.” Up in Albany, Democratic leader Sheldon Silver treat the students of this great university like ten years olds, threatening to defund Columbia University lest censors like himself prove unable to shut the poor children’s ears to difficult speech. (What, was he worried they’d be convinced, join the jihad?) Then a Republican presidential candidate chimes in-bye, bye, federalism!’saying Washington should starve the school of funds, too. American diplomats used to have the gumption to spar face to face with dreaded foreign leaders. Now they go on cable TV and whine about what a “travesty” it would have been to visit a site which properly should belong to the world. Hundreds of foreign nationals died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 (maybe even some of the Iranian!). Yet we have to systematically repress that-as if our national ego would crack like fine crystal if we were forced to acknowledge the mingling of American blood with that of mere foreigners.

read more HERE

from Media Bistro

Leading off the season premiere of 60 Minutes tonight, Scott Pelley interviewed the president of Iran. The interview occurred Thursday in Tehran, just as the news about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s desire to visit ground zero was breaking here in the U.S. Ahmadinejad will be in New York this week for the U.N. General Assembly.

Toward the end of the segment, the Iranian president joked that the discussion was turning into more of an interrogation than an interview:

Pelley: “but when I ask you a question as direct as ‘will you pledge not to test a nuclear weapon?’ you act…you dance all around the question. You never say ‘yes,’ you never say ‘no.’”

Ahmadinejad: “well, thank you for that. You are like a CIA investigator and…”

Pelley: “I Am Just A Reporter. I Am A Simple, Average American Reporter.”

Ahmadinejad: “This is not Guantanamo Bay. This is not a Baghdad prison. This is not a secret prison in Europe. This is not Abu Ghraib this is Iran. I’m the president of this country!”

By NAHAL TOOSI
The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, facing protests and tabloid headlines calling him “evil” and a “madman,” stirred debate Monday about free speech ahead of his appearance at Columbia University.

Columbia President Lee Bollinger has promised to grill Ahmadinejad on subjects such as human rights, the Holocaust and Iran’s disputed nuclear program. The Iranian leader previously has called the Holocaust “a myth” and called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

Bollinger said Monday it was a question of free speech and academic freedom.

“It’s extremely important to know who the leaders are of countries that are your adversaries. To watch them to see how they think, to see how they reason or do not reason. To see whether they’re fanatical, or to see whether they are sly,” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Ahmadinejad is to speak and answer questions at a Columbia forum Monday, followed by a scheduled address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.

The New York Daily News’ front page on Monday read: “THE EVIL HAS LANDED.” The New York Post called Ahmadinejad the “Madman Iran Prez” and a “guest of dishonor.”

read more HERE

Leaders of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on Thursday agreed unified measures against terrorism, but also issued a warning against a monopolistic world order in what was seen by analysts as a message for Washington.

In a final declaration at their summit in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan warned that unilateral actions were not adequate to solving existing problems.

‘An effective global security architecture can only be achieved under the leadership of the United Nations and by closer adherence to the UN charter,’ read the final statement, which specifically mentioned the United States.

More at Monsters & Critics

A draft UN Security Council resolution to expand the world body’s mandate in Iraq is expected to be approved soon.

The draft sponsored by the US and Britain will give the UN scope to help promote political reconciliation, settle disputed internal boundaries, and plan for a national census.

“I think it will get voted early next week,” Emyr Jones Parry, Britain’s ambassador to the UN, said. “There’s no problem on it - it’s straight forward.”

Britain circulated the resolution to the other Security Council members on Wednesday and council experts went over the text. The experts were expected to meet again on Friday.

Russia signalled its assent on Thursday, making approval by the Security Council almost certain.

Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s UN ambassador, said on Thursday that “it’s overall a good draft … I don’t see any basic problems.”

The UN secretary-general has been under pressure from the US to expand the world body’s role in Iraq.

Ban Ki-moon said in June he would consider it, but said deteriorating security in Iraq was an obstacle.

More at AlJazeera

I think it’s safe to say this is way past due.

The search for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction appears close to an official conclusion, several years after their absence became a foregone one.

The United States and Britain have circulated a new proposal to the members of the United Nations Security Council to “terminate immediately the mandates” of the weapons inspectors. Staff meetings on the latest proposal have already taken place, and officials say that the permanent Council members, each of whom has veto power, seem ready to let the inspection group - the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission - meet its end.

In the heat of the debate leading to the Iraq invasion, the commission’s vaguely Slavic’sounding acronym, Unmovic, rang out almost nonstop through the halls of the United Nations. Its inspection teams, at the very center of the worldwide debate over the war, supervised the destruction of rocket engines and fuel tanks.

But the inspectors left Iraq in March 2003, shortly before the invasion, and have not been allowed to return. October will be the third anniversary of the American-led Iraq Survey Group’s finding that the Hussein government had destroyed its stockpiles of illicit weapons just months after the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

More at the New York Times