Showing posts with label United Nations Security Council. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United Nations Security Council. Show all posts

Thursday, January 15

In the Time of Cholera

Kannu

We've got a book called as the white mans burden. By WILLIAM easterly. It talks about how the aid and human rights industry has been born and how little it's been effective. In a previous guise this was colonialism. Now it's aidism. 

See what the un and cdc and who and and and have done. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Years of intervention and billions of dollars and frankly progress has been shite. 

Ridiculous. Still you need freedom of speech son to keep these governments and supranational agencies in check. 

Love

Baba. 

In the Time of Cholera - By Jonathan M. Katz | Foreign Policy
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/10/in_the_time_of_cholera?page=full


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The horror was in the stomach, an empty, draining pain. All the way up the highway, Rosemond Lorimé had felt it running out of him. It was like the river running out of him, getting worse with every turn around the mountains.

Rosemond lived in a thatch-and-mud house in Meille, a small village on Haiti’s central plateau, built along a little river of the same name. There wasn’t much to do there, among the bean plants and banana trees, for a man of 21. You could swim or take a bath in the river. You could help the older folks raise pigs and turkeys, or plant cassava. Rosemond and his cousin would sell rum andkleren moonshine to the soldiers at the U.N. base, and introduce them to the neighborhood girls in exchange for a few dollars. But that was about it. Even the earthquake had been boring in Meille. The ground had just groaned and rumbled and stopped.

The sickness came nine months after. Rosemond’s father fell ill first. A low, hard pain formed in his gut and radiated all over his body. Then the diarrhea began, then vomiting, torrential like a fall storm. Soon everyone in the house was sick: Rosemond, his four brothers and sisters, his mother. The illness then moved into the neighboring houses. The family gathered up its money and sent Rosemond’s father to the hospital in the nearby town of Mirebalais. But it soon became clear that Rosemond’s sickness was the worst. Pain gripped his gut, and heat rose in his head and cut his intestines as if he’d eaten a stick of thorns. His stomach became a rejecting vessel. The water he drank would come back up or go straight out. Rice did the same. Even the garlic tea and cotton leaf that the women in the village gave him to settle his stomach ended up vomited or run out onto the ground. The diarrhea kept flowing; Rosemond became thirstier and thirstier. Neighbors whispered that it must be a spell.

The family looked for money to send Rosemond to the hospital too, but it took days to find enough. The day after his father returned home, weary but alive, Rosemond’s brothers put the slumping young man on the back of a motorcycle taxi to go to Mirebalais.

Under an arid sky, arms carried Rosemond into the little hospital with green-painted walls. A voice cried out in the room. Struggling for air, Rosemond closed his drying eyes and never opened them again. It was Sunday, Oct. 17, 2010.

Monday, July 18

India abandons quest for permanent UN Security Council seat

Here.

 

I agree, what’s the big deal about having a permanent council seat? What exactly would be the benefits to India? In terms of well being or happiness or security of its people that the other things ranging from trade policy to economic liberalisation or industrial growth or its nuclear arms? On the other hand, having a damn permanent council seat means that you keep on having to be in the bad books of many people and keep on coming under pressure. And then you have to spend money on silly things. Useless.

Saturday, July 12

Bringing dictators to justice is troublesome

This article is a very thought provoking one, talking about how ICC indictments are becoming more and more difficult. And if you look at the UNSC which has now been thought about as idiots for not voting against Mugabe, one wonders if this indeed will work.

Curious, no? how dictators are protected by Russia and China? Mind you, USA and UK are protecting their own goons, robbers and thugs in Pakistan, Iraq and in so many other countries. I guess, Mugabe is no longer our son of a bitch, no?

 

Wednesday, April 2

Freedom of speech anybody?

Knowing the supine and principle-less behaviour of the United Nations and the Secretary General, I am not surprised that people want to hide what they say. Very well, hide what you say but in return, we want a freedom of information act on the United Nations. You are currently using MY tax money, and I demand to know what you are spending it on. And, hmmm, why do you want to hide things in a democratic institution? Oh! sorry, we are talking about Arabs here....

Thursday, January 31

Food prices are so high that some people are reduced to eating dirt

I am not joking but this is indeed the case in Haiti. I have been warning on these pages about food prices and the fact that the UN needs to take this in hand for months now, but now its getting worse and worse. It is now a security issue seriously. I quote:

With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some must take desperate measures to fill their bellies.

Charlene, 16 with a month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places such as Cité Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings, and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt, and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Tuesday, January 29

Darfur Peacekeeping Force again delayed

As it so happens, the saga of the Darfurian UN Peacekeeping force goes on. The mission is again delayed, and the head of the UN Peacekeeping says that it will take this entire year to assemble, with only 9,000 out of 26,000 personnel fully deployed up till now. I keep on talking about it and every day that passes, this half baked abortion of a mission becomes more and more embarrassing. No helicopters, no good equipment, host nation hostile, donor nations not interested, African Union useless, United Nations even more so. Welcome to the new community of nations.

Friday, September 28

People who want a permanent security council seat are out of their tiny minds

So tell me something truthfully. Just what benefit does permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council bring to you and me? Or to your country? The way I see it, it has something to do with prestige. But you can take that prestige, add £2.30 to it and buy a cup of coffee. That's about it.

If you are a permanent member, you have to worry about external pressure. You step into diplomatic messes like the UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband did when he supported South Africa. You are expected to be the policeman of the world. You spend more money on strange things. Your government gets distracted with silly things around the world. You dont get to concentrate on your own work, citizens and life. So what's the big deal? Why? There doesnt seem to be any benefits and you end up with only costs. Sod it, if Germany wants to become a permanent member of the UNSC, they can have the British Seat.

I am sure I am going to hear howls of protest, but until and unless I get a very clear, precise and detailed definition of how the UK is benefiting from a UNSC Permanent Seat, my opinion that the permanent seat is only for some foreign office mandarins stands. It is of absolutely no benefit to the country at all!.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!