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Global Roundup

The Fire This Time

Boutros Boutros-Ghali is not a happy man. The United Nations reports that, as of August 15, member states owe the organization $2.6 billion-the cost of one Seawolf nuclear submarine. That includes $1.7 billion for peacekeeping operations and $858 million for operating budgets.

In his 133-page annual report, the secretary-general warns that "the finances of the United Nations are deteriorating, its development funds are drying up and the safety of its field personnel is at risk." A total of 67,269 "peacekeeping troops," military observers and civilian police were deployed in 16 countries as of July 31. The majority are in Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia. So far, 188 peacekeepers have died in what used to be Yugoslavia.

"Calls for ever greater United Nations effectiveness under conditions of financial penury make no sense," Mr. Boutros-Ghali said. "It is as though the town fire department were being dispatched to put out fires raging in several places at once while a collection was being taken to raise money for the fire-fighting equipment."

The "fire" is lawlessness, Mr. Secretary-General. Without world law to "put out" the national fires, your unhappiness as well as humanity's will continue.

Clinton vs. Clinton

While Hillary Clinton spoke eloquently at the Beijing Women's Conference about women's rights as "human rights," her husband announced a $25 billion increase in his military spending plan for the next six years. The First Lady, a lawyer by profession, never mentioned world law as a prerequisite to the protection of human rights. That would have exposed her husband's total reliance on the military option against The Phantom Enemy.

WCN offers a respectful suggestion: Hillary, when you are comfortably alone with President Bill, tell him that human rights are not grants from states but claims by humans-women or men-and that those claims must be protected by world, not national, law.

Even better, when world law is in place, he will not have to spend all that money on armaments, which, if used, only violate the first human right: to live.

Enemies of the People

We thought the 1974 International Court of Justice decision banning nuclear testing on Mururoa atoll was binding. How naive!

Now New Zealand is seeking to reopen the 20-year-old case in order to obtain an "interim ruling" banning the new round of French tests.

France, one of the national judges at the 1945 Nuremberg Tribunal, which first defined certain international actions as "crimes against humanity," has maintained that the International Court "has no authority" to hear the case. It seems that the nuclear tests are an "internal matter of security." Bien entendu.

If indeed the Earth's atmosphere "belongs" to all of us, President Chirac falls under the Nuremberg Principles as an "enemy of humanity." China's leaders, who also defy humanity with their nuclear testing, are likewise "enemies of humanity."

In a broader sense, however, we are all "enemies of humanity" when, individually, we continue to pollute the common atmosphere.

On the Line

In this issue of WCN, we report about the Iranian who has been residing in the International section of Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris for over six years. Now upward of 200 Palestinians deported by Libya to the Egyptian border for lack of travel documents are living literally on the line between the two countries. This "line" is world territory! It doesn't "belong" to any nation, yet is the most important part of each nation's existence. Without boundaries, nations would not exist.

The World Service Authority would issue travel documents to the Palestinians except that the border does not have a PO address.

Cold War Legacy

How much would it cost to clean up all the earth's hazardous waste sites? Take one example, the USA. According to the Department of Energy, there are 10,500 sites. Cost: $230 billion, a guess by DOE, depending on how clean Americans want the sites.

To turn the sites into "green fields" would cost $500 billion. Trouble is, the technology to do this hasn't yet been invented.

The mega-nuke dump at Hanford, a post-cold war nightmare, is the closest thing America has to Chernobyl. A $100 billion program in 1988 rose three years later to a $160 billion, 30-year program. Now DOE estimates cleanup at Hanford will cost a quarter-trillion bucks...through 2070!

Multiply this crushing burden by like sites throughout the world and know that the health of Gaia is slowly being imperiled by human thoughtlessness. How much longer will Mother Nature forgive us before turning us out of Her house?

Global Warming "Signal" At Hand

If heat-trapping gases are not cut by 60%, reported a U.N. Climate Conference in Berlin in April, humanity will suffer catastrophic effects of global warming.

Scientific data now proves, contends the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate, that the burning of wood, coal and oil which releases carbon dioxide into the air, is at least partly responsible for the so-called greenhouse effect, or warming of the earth's atmosphere.

The globe's surface temperature has risen 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1900.


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