EU Referendum

The World Bank Board has unanimously approved the appointment of Robert Zoellick as that body's President. As we have pointed out before, he is not likely to be a push-over for the tranzis who do not really want to take their snouts out of the trough or reform the way the World Bank does business (though business may not be the right word. I wonder what will happen the first time he expresses, however mildly, dissatisfaction with the officialdom of the World Bank.

Labels: tranzis

We are all assuming that the World Bank directors will accept Robert Zoelick as their next boss but will they and all those who have been screeching their triumph over Paul Wolfowitz be happy with what comes next? On Zoelick’s past performance it seems unlikely that he will be a typical tranzi as Wolfowitz’s predecessors, John McCloy and James Wolfensohn (a close friend of former SecGen Kofi Annan’s) were. At best, one can say that his immediate manners are smoother than those of Wolfowitz.

Der Spiegel has an interesting and rather unhappy article on the subject. Zoellick, they point out, is a man Germans know and like.

Robert Zoellick will be the first World Bank president to take office already decorated with the Federal Cross of Merit, Germany's distinguished state honorary badge. His predecessors John McCloy and Jim Wolfensohn also received the Cross -- but only later. Zoellick already wears it, in recognition of his efforts to help bring about German reunification. As the main United States mediator in the "Two Plus Four Agreement" -- the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany that emerged from the 1990 talks between the two German states and the four World War II victors, and which led to German reunification -- he vigorously championed German self-determination. The Germans thanked him by awarding him the order.

He is also a man who seems to believe strongly in free trade across the world. Certainly, he pushed many of the WTO agreements forward. So, everything in the garden is lovely? Sadly, no.
It seems that Mr Zoellick puts America’s interests first. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked. That a man employed by the United States government should put that country’s interests first!!!

Worse is to come. Robert Zoellick, it seems, is a long-standing friend of the Bush family and part of the very close political circle around both Bush Senior and Junior.

When George W. Bush, then still the governor of Texas, set his sights on the White House, Zoellick was part of an intimate circle of advisors led by later National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. They called themselves "the Vulcans" and they sought to transform him into a man of the world.

Gulp and double gulp. The President nominates someone who is close to him politically and personally and has also a formidable track-record in international negotiations. This just proves it. Not sure what it proves but it proves something.

In case the Europeans who managed to get Wolfowitz out (notably it was not the Asian or African members of the World Bank who hatched or even took part in the plot) should relax, Der Spiegel has this to say:

Zoellick is "moderate" only by comparison to Wolfowitz and his former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, a classic neoconservative, writes Tom Barry, the director of the left-leaning International Relations Center. Zoellick himself accepts the "the neoconservative premise of US global supremacy" but wants to "wisely manage that power," according to Barry.

He's not an ideologist, then, but an idealist: As early as one year before George W. Bush took office in January of 2001, Zoellick articulated his ideas about a "Republican foreign policy" in an essay for Foreign Affairs. The United States would shape the future world order on the basis of its military supremacy, Zoellick wrote, predicting the events of the years to come. "A modern Republican foreign policy," he wrote, "recognizes that there is still evil in the world." Bush himself couldn't have said it better.

In other words, the left does not like him but he seems to appeal to others in the US, whether they are Bush supporters or not. To me, that is quite a good recommendation. His tough love approach to the EU over Airbus and sundry other matters is also something in his favour.

Meanwhile, Irwin Stelzer views the issue from a slightly different perspective in the Daily Telegraph. In his opinion, the Europeans, led by the Germans, ably supported by our own Hilary Benn, himself involved in some doubtful financial activity (but that’s OK, chaps, he is one of us, i.e. nuanced), may well regret their Pyrrhic victory.

They did not achieve what they really wanted, which is a non-American as President of the World Bank because it was made clear to Bush by the people who matter, his American supporters that this was out of the question.

As Pyrrhic victories go, this one is top of the list. For one thing, George W. Bush heard in no uncertain terms from his supporters that they would raise a fuss if he appointed a non-American, even the respected Afghanistan central banker Ashraf Ghani, who holds both Afghan and US citizenship. For another, to sacrifice the wounded Mr Wolfowitz is one thing; to sacrifice the perk that goes along with being the largest single contributor to the World Bank, with no concessions in return, is quite another.

One did not have to be a Bush supporter or a Wolfowitz admirer to feel disturbed, not to say nauseated, by the proceedings whereby the latter was got rid of. In other words, American opinion on the matter became more united, give or take a few out and out left-wing Democrats and nutroots, whose hatred of Bush and everyone around him overcomes everything.

This may lead to what Europeans, in their hearts of hearts, fear most of all: a slow American disengagement from all these transnational organizations. What Mr Stelzer does not postulate is that there might be a much faster disengagement from Europe and matters European.

That, I am sad to say, will include Britain. It would not have escaped anybody’s attention that of the developed countries only Japan supported Wolfowitz throughout the whole mess. (Of course, the actual countries to whom his fight against corruption matters, also supported him but that is another story.) Britain, on the hand, was among the leaders of the pack.

There is, Mr Stelzer thinks, a slow realignment in American attitude to the rest of the world. This has been said before, as one or two of the sillier responses to the article point out, but never with so much force.

The Europeans' partial victory is going to come at a very high cost. Americans, and not only the neo-cons so reviled by the elite in Europe's capitals, are beginning to wonder about the usefulness of their commitment to many international institutions: "These institutions need to be rethought and restructured," said Bob Rubin, Bill Clinton's highly regarded treasury secretary. The fight over Mr Wolfowitz made Americans notice that they are squandering billions on armies of bureaucrats who think it a good idea to wreak vengeance on a man who shaped official US foreign policy, and a man who had as his central goal the elimination of corruption at the bank and among its client states.

Then there is the World Trade Organisation. The Democratic Congress has decided that the costs of ever-freer trade are too high to make the game worth the candle, and is preparing legislation that will end in tariffs on Chinese imports, restrictions on purchases from countries that do not meet US-determined labour and environmental standards, and the likely death of the Doha round of trade talks.

What of the other organizations?

Then there is the UN, an organisation that recently decided that Zimbabwe is just the country to put in the chair of its sustainable economic development committee. With an inflation rate of 2,200 per cent, rampant starvation and a bankrupt government, Zimbabwe's UN representative, who would not be in the job were he not a supporter of Robert Mugabe, can't have very much to teach America - or anyone else.

Besides, even those Americans who are unenthusiastic about Iraq, and want to see Mr Bush back in Texas clearing brush on his ranch, were offended when the UN provided the platform for Venezuela's Hugo Chávez to rant at Mr Bush, as "the devil" trailing a smell of sulphur. There is a mounting feeling that money spent to support the UN - its reputation already seriously dented by the oil-for-food scandal, its members devoted to embarrassing America and Israel while forgiving Arab nations all their sins - might not be in America's long-term interests.

Perhaps of most significance is a growing realisation in Washington that Nato is past its sell-by date. As America takes mounting casualties in Afghanistan, EU countries, with Britain the notable and honourable exception, refuse to provide significant support for an effort in which they agreed to participate. The handful of German troops are not allowed out of their barracks after dark, and soldiers from other nations patrol the most peaceful regions of that violent country.

Besides, Americans are increasingly aware that Europe is funding its generous welfare states by stinting on military spending, something they can do because they rely on American-funded Nato "assets" such as transport planes. That makes America, stung by its experience in Iraq, more rather than less likely to cut back on its role as world policeman.

Perhaps the best early clue to emerging attitudes towards international organisations was Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's decision not to attend the recent meeting of G8 foreign ministers. He simply had more important things to do than to sit through sessions that could not possibly have tangible results. Mr Paulson's German counterpart agreed with the Treasury Secretary's priorities, and sent a deputy rather than postpone his own holiday.

Will all those who revile American “arrogance” be all that happy with that outcome? It would, however, be one of history’s supreme ironies that the slow destruction of tranzis will have been started by the arrogant and seemingly completely victorious activity of their greatest promoters.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: tranzis, World Bank

As the situation in the Nahr al-Bared camp deteriorates, humanitarian organizations continue to flap around on the edges, hoping that at some point the cease-fire will last long enough for them to get in there and distribute supplies to the remaining inmates (there can be no other word) who have no running water or electricity.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has lambasted the Islamist extremists and expressed her support for the Lebanese government.

I certainly hope that the Lebanese government will be able to deal with these extremists. It's just another example of extremists in the Middle East who are trying to destabilize democratic governments.

The Lebanese government is, I think, very much trying to do the right thing here, to protect its population against the extremists who would sow discord and instability there. And I think the world is speaking out in favour of the Lebanese government.

Then again, there are not all that many democratic governments in the Middle East to destabilize and the one undisputed democracy – Israel – never seems to have the world or, even, Secretary Rice speaking out in its favour.

Inevitably, there are the voices that think the Lebanese army responding to Islamist extremism in those everlasting refugee camps in the north of Lebanon and the consequent inevitably problems are all, but all, Israel’s fault.

This outbreak of violence, the worst in Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war, is yet another consequence of the world's - and specifically America's -- failure to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict and resolve its tragic corollary, the Palestine refugee problem.

In Lebanon alone, 12 anarchic camps are home to some 400,000 refugees, most scratching a living well below the poverty line. They are a permanent source of instability. Misery and despair are the crucial ingredients of violence and terrorism.

Two or three hundred well-armed fighters of Fatah al-Islam are still holed up in the Nahr al-Bared camp near Tripoli. The Lebanese Army cannot go in to flush them out because of the virtual extra-territorial status Palestinian camps in Lebanon have enjoyed since the late 1960s.

One wonders if these people ever read what they have written. How exactly would the situation as described in that paragraph be settled by the world and, specifically, America? What would the Palestinians who, uniquely, have been living in refugee camps for generations without the slightest possibility of getting out of them and leading normal lives (unlike all other refugees in the world) achieve through any settlement engineered by other people?

We all know the answer to the second question. What they will achieve is a prolongation of their victim status.

To be fair to Dar Al-Hayat, the rest of the article is an analysis of what is going on in Lebanon and of the choices that the Lebanese government and army face. Since it persists of talking about the “Sunni street”, questions are being begged.

There seems to be some agreement that Fatah al-Islam, the group that is ensconced in Nahr al-Bared and, possibly, in other refugee camps is not Palestinian in origin. Possibly it is linked with Al-Qaeda, possibly it is another terrorist group that started up in Saudi Arabia or some other estimable Middle Eastern state.

If one thinks logically about this then one realizes that refugee camps of the Nahr al-Bared kind are obvious targets – full of people who are eternal victims, think the world owes them a living and will follow anyone who tells them that this is so and they can achieve something or other through killing people. They are also geographically easy. You can get a lot of possible supporters or, at least, victims who cannot complain too much (are these not brother Arabs, after all?) in one place.

So, one must ask who is it that has kept the Palestinians in their camps, making them easy targets? One of the most obvious organizations is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a most peculiar organization in that it exists in order to deal with only one group – the Palestinians in the Middle East. Furthermore, its way of dealing with them is to keep them in refugee camps, thus providing the world with endless pictures of victims (and themselves with jobs, one assumes).

According to an article in the Washington Times, UNRWA has been aware for some months that heavily armed “foreigners” were moving into Nahr al-Bared. The officials, all, one assumes, on comfortable salaries and even more comfortable expenses, could do nothing about this, as the camps are self-policed. That, as we know, is part of the problem. The Lebanese authorities cannot move into the camps to sort matters out until it gets to the situation we have at the moment.

On the other hand, UNRWA could have raised the alarm. Its officials are not exactly backward about coming forward normally. Why were there no statements, complaints or interviews about “a large band of foreigners carrying what has been described as mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons” entering the camp that they were supposed to be overseeing?

There are other questions, some of them being asked helplessly by Karen Koning AbuZayd, commissioner-general of UNRWA. For instance, why did the Palestinians, who are policing the camp, not stop this invasion? Come to think of it why did they not leave before the violence started? Mind you, the answer to that might be that what with the Lebanese army outside and Fatah al-Islam inside they were not allowed to leave. After all, UNRWA is not usually enthusiastic about Palestinians abandoning their refugee camps unless it is to go to another one, which is what many of them are doing in northern Lebanon at the moment.

Some of the refugees are going to Tripoli but it is questionable how long they would be allowed to stay there and some are crowding into the Badawi refugee camp, also, presumably overseen by UNRWA and its rather helpless commissioner-general. How long before the same sequence of events repeats itself in Badawi and any other Palestinian refugee camp one cares to name?

Let us not forget ever that UNRWA like all tranzis exists only because taxpayers’ money, all from the despised western world, is poured into it.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: Lebanon, tranzis

Exciting news on the education front as the BBC World Service announces:

Businesses are joining forces with governments and international groups to try to meet a pledge to provide education for all children by 2015.

The Partnerships for Education was announced in Brussels by the World Economic Forum and Unesco.

In theory this means more of our tax money going to transnational organizations to distribute as they see fit to schools in the developing world, as long, one presumes, as they teach what UNESCO approves of.

In Britain, school pupils are to work with the charity World Vision to help less fortunate children overseas.

Schools linked with the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) will take part in a year-long campaign to raise funds to build schools in India and Kenya and provide resources for schools in other places.

I have no wish to carp and I agree that children in all sorts of countries should have the opportunity (not the right) to have basic and more than basic education. But I do question whether the NAHT, which is presiding over a disintegrating education system in this country is quite the right organization to deal with this matter.

In fact, I have an idea. Given that we now have a situation where children and young adults who arrive from other countries (including India and Kenya) speak English better, know English grammar better, can do maths much better and probably know more history; given that science and engineering departments in this country face the choice of either recruiting students largely from other countries or lowering their entrance standards could the "Global Alliance to Educate All" not start in this country? What about our children? Should they not have the opportunity to receive basic education?

Furthermore, is the pattern of government provided "free" schooling, which, is presumably what is meant by all this waffle, with no apparent link between those who pay and those who receive, quite the right thing to offer and, possibly, foist on developing countries? There is, after all, reasonable evidence that when people pay, however little, when the schools are independent of bureaucracy and run for the benefit of the pupils rather than the educational establishment, in those cases education is valued considerably more.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: education, tranzis

Today's Wall Street Journal has another interesting editorial about the players in the Wolfowitz saga. The ad hoc committee that was supposed to decide whether Wolfowitz has acted unethically is dominated by Europeans most of whom are former politicians and they decided before hearing either him or Ms Riza that he was guilty, despite the evidence, and had to go.

On Saturday, the Washington Post cited "three senior bank officials" as saying that the committee has "nearly completed a report" concluding that Mr. Wolfowitz "breached ethics rules when he engineered a pay raise for his girlfriend." The Post also reported that, "According to bank officials, the timing of the committee's report and its conclusions have been choreographed for
maximum impact in what has become a full-blown campaign to persuade Wolfowitz to go." So there it is from the plotters themselves: Verdict first, trial later.

The timing is crucial in another way. President Bush is about to meet Commission President Barroso and Chancellor Merkel in a summit. He will, presumably, be put under some pressure from them to rid the World Bank of Wolfowitz and let it lapse back into its cosy, corrupt cronyism.

The article is scathing about certain Dutch politicians in particular:

The "ad hoc" chairman is Herman Wijffels, a Dutch politician who has his own blatant conflict of interest in the case. One of the main "witnesses" against Mr. Wolfowitz is Ad Melkert, another Dutch politician who had previously run the bank board's ethics committee that advised Mr. Wolfowitz to give the raise to his girlfriend that is now the basis for the accusations against him. Whom do you think Mr. Wijfells is going to side with: His fellow countryman, or an American reviled in Europe for wanting to depose Saddam Hussein?

Mr. Melkert has played an especially craven role by running from his own responsibility in the case. As head of the ethics committee in 2005, he refused to let Mr. Wolfowitz recuse himself from dealings with Shaha Riza, who had been long employed at the bank. Then Mr. Melkert advised him to ensure that Ms. Riza got a new job that included some kind of raise or promotion to compensate for the disruption to her career. Now, however, Mr. Melkert claims he was an innocent bystander who knew nothing about Ms. Riza's raise.

How very European. This is the same Ad Melkert, who on October 24, 2005, after Ms. Riza had been told of her new job and salary, wrote in a letter to Mr. Wolfowitz that "Because the outcome is consistent with the [Ethics] Committee's findings and advice above, the Committee concurs with your view that this matter can be treated as closed."

And it is the same Ad Melkert who absolved Mr. Wolfowitz after inspecting two whistleblower emails from an anonymous "John Smith" that circulated around the bank in early 2006 and charged malfeasance. A January 21 whistleblower email included a reference to Ms. Riza's "salary increase of around US$50,000" and was sent to the entire bank board.

Oh and one more point. Ms Riza, details of whose employment and salary were leaked to the media against all rules, has not had a chance to give her side of the story. Until now.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: anti-Americanism, tranzis, World Bank

Back in October we reported what was promising to be a juicy scandal, the tale of Commissar Verheugen and his lady friend, Petra Erler, whom he had appointed to be chef du cabinet, giving her in the process a hefty salary rise from €9,045 to €11,579 a month (€138,948 a year).

Commissar Verheugen and Ms Erler were photographed walking round hand in hand and, at one point, wearing nothing at a nudist beach, unless you count a baseball hat as clothing.

At the time there were two theories advanced. Verheugen had taken on the job of Vice-President of the European Commission with great promises to reform the institution and to have a bonfire of red tape and regulations. (At least I think he was the one with the bonfire.)

When this did not work, he complained about obstructionism among Commission officials. As the Wall Street Journal Europe put it recently:

Mr. Verheugen announced plans in 2005 to do away with scores of economically burdensome and antiquated regulations, which he thought could help lift economic growth. When his efforts went nowhere, he gave an interview to the press blaming the failure on the opposition he'd encountered within the Brussels bureaucracy. The Commission's staff union reacted predictably, by calling on him to apologize and suggesting he resign. Not coincidentally, it was around the same time that stories of his special relationship with Ms. Erler, and of her new job, came to the attention of the press and the public.

A coincidence? Maybe. The machinery of bureaucracy does not like anyone who tries to tamper with it. Not least of the coincidental news stories were the suggestions that, in fact, it was all the other way round. Verheugen knew that the embarrassing pictures were about to surface and launched a pre-emptive attack at the bureaucrats in order to blame them for the publication.

However one looks at it, neither Commissar Verheugen nor Ms Erler have suffered. His various colleagues rushed to his defence on professional grounds with great proclamations of the need for privacy, though his behaviour had clearly undermined the Commission’s code of conduct.

Try as I might I cannot find any motions of censure in the European Parliament or calls for the Commission and Verheugen’s office, in particular, to regain its dignity by sacking the man.

The reason this old story is being rehashed by Brett Stephens in the WSJE, among others is because there are certain similarities with the ongoing Wolfowitz saga, he being the man, whom the World Bank officials did not want, whose attempts at cutting corruption they have undermined and whom they are now managing to smear quite effectively.

There are also certain differences:

“Now consider the Wolfowitz saga. Superficially, the similarities with Mr. Verheugen rest with the details of their respective scandals: a close lady friend on staff, a suspiciously generous pay raise, allegations of nepotism and conflicts of interest.

But aside from the facts that Mr. Wolfowitz is unmarried and prefers his clothes on, the substance of the cases could not be more different. Mr. Verheugen seems to have obscured the nature of his relationship with Ms. Erler; Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged his relationship with Shaha Riza before he took the job as Bank president. Mr. Verheugen sought to use the power of his office to bring Ms. Erler nearer to him; Mr. Wolfowitz sought to use the power of his to move Ms. Riza away. Ms. Erler moved into a better job; Ms. Riza was forced into a lesser one. Mr. Verheugen ignored his own code of conduct; Mr. Wolfowitz followed the instructions of his ethics committee, whose chairman later praised him for acting in a "constructive spirit."”

There is also another difference. The same people who have huffed and puffed about Verheugen, his professional achievements and the need for privacy, are demanding that Paul Wolfowitz resign, whether his is guilty of inappropriate behaviour or not, in order to restore the World Bank’s good name (in itself something of a joke).

Even the European Parliament (called completely incorrectly by Reuters and others "the European Union's legislature") has voted 332 votes to 251 to call for Wolfowitz’s resignation, though this is not, in any sense of the word, their concern.

Apparently, the resignation is necessary in order not to undermine the World Bank's anti-corruption policy. The trouble is that it is the anti-corruption policy that has brought about the President's problems.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: European Parliament, tranzis

For those of us who have been paying attention to what is going on in Darfur for some years, there is a good deal of grim amusement to be got out of the sight of the Left, including the Green Party in Germany and assorted Hollywood luvvies deciding that this is the latest political bandwagon to jump on. Not Zimbabwe, not Tibet, not North Korea. Perish the thought.

Naturally, they are calling for action. What sort of action? Ah, there lies the difficulty, as discussed in this longish piece.

Labels: Sudan, tranzis

When in doubt, have a look at what the UN and other tranzis are up to. Bound to find something entertaining there. Yes, yes, I know it is akin to shooting fish in a barrel but, occasionally, that is such fun.

Then again, it is important to recall that these organizations cost us a lot of money, which they tend to use to try to undermine democratic nation states. So, keeping a weather eye on them is of some importance.

First up, as ever, is the United Nations, now under new management and not a whit better for that.

It seems that UN peacekeeping troops will not be sent to Chad because the situation there is too volatile. Undoubtedly so, but I was under the impression that it is the peacekeepers’ job to ensure that the situation gets less volatile. I suppose, that would be called peacemaking.

The two SecGens have differed on what ought to be done.

Unlike his predecessor, Ban made no recommendation on whether the council should deploy a U.N. peacekeeping force to Chad and neighboring Central African Republic to help thousands of civilians caught in local fighting and the spillover of Sudan's Darfur conflict.

In one of his final reports, former Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended against deploying peacekeepers to the two countries until all parties agree to a cease-fire and start talks aimed at a political solution. He cited the risk to troops and very difficult logistics.

There is a risk, said Ban Ki-moon, the new SecGen that the UN troops will be seen as interfering with the military agenda of the various groups, particularly Chadian rebels, based in Sudan and, therefore, legitimate targets for attack. And there I was thinking that it is only the evil Americans and British who could find themselves in such a situation.

Ban stressed that a lasting solution to the crisis in both countries depends on their leaders. He urged the governments "to move forward rapidly and to muster the political will and establish peace and stability in their countries and in the region."

Meanwhile, Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, a sensible website that, nevertheless, suffers from an idea that somehow the UN can be reformed and improved, published and editorial piece in the New York Sun.

In it he takes on Jeffrey Laurenti, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a former adviser to Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation, who finds the make-up of the “new” UN Human Rights Council, still packed with countries who would not recognize human rights if they met them in the street.

"The biggest institutional overhaul to emerge from outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan's U.N. reform drive," wrote Mr. Laurenti, "was the upgrading of the policy body overseeing human rights to a yearround Council, four-fifths of whose members are bona fide democracies; the Council's nation-specific focus on war-fighting excesses by Israel and Sudan, however, offended the West and Islamists respectively."

As Mr Neuer says, “never have so few words on a U.N. subject managed to convey so much misinformation”.

Firstly, it is not exactly accurate to say that the body has been upgraded. It may meet more often than its predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights met but, so far, it has not even censured a single country with abysmal human rights record. Even the Commission managed to odd censure.

Secondly, Mr Laurenti shows himself to be part of the problem as he equates Israel’s defence against Hamas and Hezbollah attacks with the mass murder, torture, rape and ethnic cleansing that are being conducted by the janweed militias in Darfur with the full approval of the Sudanese government.

Instead, the council so far has devoted 100% of its condemnations — three special sessions and eight resolutions — to one-sided attacks against Israel, granting immunity to Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism. The world's major Western democracies, Mr. Annan, and even harsh critics of Israel like Amnesty International have decried the council's politically motivated bias.

How bad were these condemnations if former SecGen Kofi Annan and Amnesty International have decried them?

Then there is the question of the bona fide democracies that, according to Mr Laurenti, make up the Council. Of course, a body that deals with human rights ought to be made up entirely of bona fide democracies and countries where the rule of law is paramount but even four fifths would be an achievement if it were true.

These are the 47 members:

Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Finland, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Tunisia, Brazil, France, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, Japan, Mali, Pakistan, Peru, Republic of Korea, Romania, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Zambia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Canada, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Germany, Jordan, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Switzerland, Uruguay

A mixed batch, to put it mildly. According to Freedom House’s annual survey about half the members of the Council do not meet the basic standards of full democracy.
So, where does this assessment of four fifths come from? This is Mr Neuer’s idea:

He [Jeffrey Laurenti] apparently refers to the fact that 37 council members have signed on to the Community of Democracies, a loose association of over 100 countries, membership to which requires little. Under Mr. Laurenti's definition, "bona fide democracies" include Bahrain, Bangladesh, Jordan, Morocco, and Vladimir Putin's Russia — regimes that jail journalists, trample basic freedoms, or commit systematic torture.

The Community of Democracies is an interesting organization, since, at times, it has been suggested as an alternative to the severely discredited United Nations. Set up in Poland in 2000, its Council’s “mission statement” is as follows:

CCD is different from the many NGOs that promote democracy. We believe that an environment of cooperation among nations offers the best hope for resolving the critical problems of our age and that an organization of democracies acting in concert is a vital step in that direction. What distinguishes us is that CCD is the only nongovernmental organization in the world with an exclusive focus on the Community of Democracies. We believe that an effective way to consolidate the gains of democratic expansion is by strengthening that Community. We view this effort, which includes the creation of a Democracy Caucus in the UN, as a means toward our long-range goal -- consolidating democracy globally by constructing an enduring framework enabling democracies to act in concert on the issues of concern to mankind.

A good deal of it makes sense, though one cannot help wondering what a Democracy Caucus in the UN might achieve. Also, despite its desire to keep the international bureaucracy to a minimum, organizations and institutes seem to have been set up in various places.

The problem is, of course, the signatories to the original document that includes such democratic countries as Bangladesh, Haiti, Nigeria, Russia and Venezuela.

A secondary problem is the asserted principles of the organization, the first one being “our common adherence to the purposes and principles set forth in the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” with only the fourth one mentioning “democratic values”.

The long list of democratic principles and practices are routinely ignored in several of the signatories and a large proportion of UN member states. For instance, does the Arab Republic of Egypt really uphold the principles of

The right of every person to freedom of opinion and of expression, including to exchange and receive ideas and information through any media, regardless of frontiers.

The right of every person to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Somehow, I find that hard to believe after yesterday’s news.

Labels: Community of Democracies, tranzis, UN

AllahPundit and others are cautiously optimistic about the new SecGen of the UN, Ban Ki-moon. His reply to a question at a press conference indicates that he believes Saddam to have been a vicious thug and mass murderer and, possibly, deserving of the death sentence.

He also adds that whatever his private views are, capital punishment is for each member state to decide on. Of course, what he really means is that it is for the political elite of each member state to decide on, with added counter-inducements thrown in by such organizations as the European Union.

We shall watch the developments with interest but we maintain our basic position: individuals like Kofi Annan may be the pits in transnational politics but, in the end, it is the system that is the real problem.

To prove this, Al-Jazeera reports that Ban Ki-moon is finding himself in hot water by not coming out categorically against capital punishment. Italy, according to this report is starting an international drive for a complete ban (well, a complete ban by the UN and we all know what that is worth) on all executions.

On Sunday, Ashraf Qazi Jehangir, the UN special representative in Iraq, had released a statement saying that the world body "remains opposed to capital punishment, even in the case of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide".

In other words, the UN together with the EU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Italian government considers the lives of bloodthirsty mass murderers to be more valuable than those of their victims.

Labels: Ban Ki-moon, capital punishment, tranzis, UN