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