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But children do have these rights, established by UN Convention in 1989

http://www.unicef.org/crc/

Nah, now they are forced to suicide like Turkey makes its females that violate honor.

Really? Girls that go to school in Afghanistan are forced to kill themselves? Or the mothers that take them there are? Please kindly supply a link to that effect. Maybe you'll find that sort of information here, or here, or here, or here. That last one documents the yearly doubling of girls attending school there. You can just cut to the chase by linking to an article showing that the rate of those girls' mothers being forced to kill themselves has also doubled. Or you can just STFU and grind your "Afghanistan was better under the Taliban, and Mullah Omar just needed a little more time to really show some progress" axe in some other way.

Children are currently losing limbs because we can't find all the mines - we really need mines that MOVE AROUND to ensure they their legs blown off, no matter where they go.

And now impoverished refugees will want to harvest them for their technological components...

Makes me weep. What we need is self-replicating limbs - how much has the government allocated to that project?

Wow Tim, that was quite a little rant. Have you ever been to India? (If not, I have some travel photos at...enjoy :-)

Those are great snapshots, Mark. They really change the substance of my argument. After all, a few vacation photos tell the whole story of India better than the many, many, many, resources that tell us that India is a third-world country.

India has one of the worst infant mortality rates on the planet, they have a sickening gap between rich and poor, they have high rates of diseases that are all but eradicated in the first world, and they have...suburbs in Bangalore.

The reality of the situation is very simple: labor in India is cheap because it is a very poor country. They have abysmal standards for public health, medicine and sanitation, and tens of thousands of people die every year from diseases that are completely preventable. International aid organizations funnel billions of dollars a year into the country to fight things like polio and malaria, and meanwhile, the Indian goverment spends massive amounts of money on technical education that benefits only a relative few members of the highest castes.

It would be easy for the USA to compete on cost of labor, if we allowed our infrastructure to degrade to match that of a third-world country. If we stopped filtering our water, treating our sewage, and housing our homeless (just in the poor regions, of course), we could save billions on taxes. Then, we could deny higher education to 2/3rds of our students, label them as "laborers" or "merchants" and tell them that they could never aspire to a higher standard of living, due to birthright. Think of the savings!

Yessir, we could make those changes, and we would almost certainly become internationally "competitive"...I wonder why we don't?

Sure, you're not alone in refusing to sign the convention on childrens rigths, you share that honor with Somalia. That give a warm cuddly feeling ?

The thing is, I don't get it. I'm absolutely positive, if you where to read the declaration (available here) for the US public and ask if they're in favor or not, literally 95% (or more) would be in favor, and you're a democracy, so I don't understand why you don't demand your government gets with the program.

I'm not real worried about child rights in the US, they do okay, so I don't yell at the government.

Also, the US has signed the convention, it just hasn't been ratified. From: http://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30229.html

Who has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and why?

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely and rapidly ratified human rights treaty in history. Only two countries, Somalia and the United States, have not ratified this celebrated agreement. Somalia is currently unable to proceed to ratification as it has no recognized government. By signing the Convention, the United States has signalled its intention to ratify--but has yet to do so.

As in many other nations, the United States undertakes an extensive examination and scrutiny of treaties before proceeding to ratify. This examination, which includes an evaluation of the degree of compliance with existing law and practice in the country at state and federal levels, can take several years--or even longer if the treaty is portrayed as being controversial or if the process is politicized. Moreover, the US Government typically will consider only one human rights treaty at a time. Currently, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women is cited as the nation's top priority among human rights treaties.

The fact that Somalia doesn't have a recognized government makes the US look worse than pretty much any other reason possibly could, and I still don't care. Let me know when the standards for child rights in the third world even come close to the US(or the rest of the developed world) and I will worry about it.

The sanctions were the real killer, and the water system (which was fine until we bombed it in Gulf War I) is still killing tens of thousands of children and others every year. Perhaps 1 million children under the age of 5 have died due to bad water and malnutrition since Gulf War I.

The Iraqi under-5 mortality rate was 50 in 1990 and 125 in 2005. 122,000 Iraqi children under 5 died in 2005. (UNICEF
That is at least 512,000 excess child deaths since 1999 when UNICEF estimated there had been at least 500,000 excess child deaths since sanctions began.

The Politics of Dead Children"The other, far more credible source of the 500,000 number is a pair of 1999 UNICEF studies that estimated the under-5 mortality rates of both Iraqi regions based on interviews with a total of 40,000 households."

Is killing over a million infants, preschoolers and kindergarteners worth it? Maybe you should do that calculations again.

Picture a square mile of child graves.

Picture a solid pile of tiny bodies five hundred feet by five hundred feet and four feet high.

It makes me sick to know that my country has done this and continues to do this. This is a crime against humanity in the most revolting possible form, and all those who supported war and sanctions have the blood of a million children on their hands.

Idiot. Look on wikipedia, in the sweatshop article. If you still don't believe it, take up the issue there. Quoting from wikipedia:

According to a UNICEF study an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 Nepalese children turned to prostitution after the US banned that country's carpet exports in the 1990s. Also, after the Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in the US, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs in Bangladesh, leaving many to resort to jobs such as "stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution," - "all of them more hazardous and exploitative than garment production" according to the UNICEF study.

Reference: http://www.unicef.org/sowc97/

Everyone willing to pay $300 for this gadget that they don't need should immediately go give their disposable $300 to unicef at http://www.unicef.org/uniteforchildren/index.html

Sheesh!

If showing sexual content and harsh language to children leads to the lowest birthrate among teenager, then we should do that...since we have the highest teenage birth rate. Japan's is 4, ours is 64, and this data comes from unicef.org, not exactly a obscure or untrustworthy source.

http://www.unicef.org/pon96/inbirth.htm


And do you know how many abortions are there in Japan?

Here it says that abortion in japanese teenagers has more than quadrupled. This article, even though it's old, states that abortion is under-reported.

...but that you have no idea that not only do people in Japan have less sex...


Guess that if you're talking about knowing japanese culture, you've heard of "enjo kosai" and its reality, or not?

If showing sexual content and harsh language to children leads to the lowest birthrate among teenager, then we should do that...since we have the highest teenage birth rate. Japan's is 4, ours is 64, and this data comes from unicef.org, not exactly a obscure or untrustworthy source.

http://www.unicef.org/pon96/inbirth.htm

Saying "Did you ever consider that maybe Japan's culture is wrong?" shows not only that you are a idiot, but that you have no idea that not only do people in Japan have less sex, and lower crime rates. So to say that they are somehow immoral because of what they show their children is idiotic, they know how to raise their children, they dont let their televisions do it for they as you obviously let your television do. Stop berating people of other nations and start looking at the problems in your own home you intolerant ignoramus!

UN is not far from Al Quaeda and RIAA

Wow.... its amazing isn't it how the organisation that is responsible for some of the most effective global treaties, charities and welfare organisations. The UN has certainly done more than any single country to promote peace and equality and you are comparing it to a terrorist organisation and the enforcement arm of the media industry....

This is the organisation that is ABLE to do peace keeping in lots of countries around the world where ONE COUNTRY is unable to act as an independent between warring factions. (UN Peace keeping) This is the organisation that the US Goverment is DESPERATE to get more involved in Iraq for instance.

This is the organisation that can get countries together to discuss elements that matter to the whole planet (Desertification) and specific elements like helping out certain groups in countries ( helping out in Laos)

This is the organisation tasked with sorting out the trials of Rwanda and Yugoslavia as well of some of the most important international treaties.

And then of course there is the REALLY bad stuff they do like UNHCR on landmines and of course the scum at UNICEF

This is just part of what the UN has done since the second world war, the vast vast majority of it very good and very effective.

And as for your corruption, "Aid for Food" was indeed bad corruption, how different this is of course from Halliburton and the open White House chequebook is a mute point.

Well, I can see his point. Political statements are more important than people.

Look at their top 5 priorities ..
Girl`s education is right at the top.

Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says:

1. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.

Not sure if this applies, it seems pretty vague.

I think this is a very bad move, mainly since this ensures the entire next generation will have a file, (not that they don't already?) which will be accessed by people who are not yet in office or even alive now. But it could be experimented with by starting with individuals in office. It would fit on a CD.

And not by a thing margin, see those Unicef numbers : 15/1000 as EU average and 4 times more (64/1000) in the US. Almost same numbers in 98, and I would guess still the same now.

And not by a thing margin, see those Unicef numbers : 15/1000 as EU average and 4 times more (64/1000) in the US. Almost same numbers in 98, and I would guess still the same now.

There is broad international agreement on the definition of child pornography:

Child pornography means any representation, by whatever means, of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily sexual purposes. Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. 110 Signatories, 87 Parties

The sexual exploitation of a child for the amusement of others or commercial gain is not an exercise in free speech, but a silencing and corruption of the innocent.

There is broad international agreement on the definition of child pornography:

Child pornography means any representation, by whatever means, of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily sexual purposes. Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. 110 Signatories, 87 Parties

The sexual exploitation of a child for the amusement of others or commercial gain is not an exercise in free speech, but a silencing and corruption of the innocent.

Well said!

Add to the list WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO.

Screw the Red Cross, they are nothing but a corporation out to make a buck. The head of the Red Cross makes $576,000 a year. The Red Cross also makes contracts with hospitals to only buy blood and other supplies from them. For example, a few years ago I had to get surgery, I was going to self-donate blood 3 months in advance to avoid any kind of conflicts or infections. The hospital then kindly informed me that such practices were no longer able to be done because a contract with the Red Cross said they must get all their blood through the Red Cross. Don't donate to the Red Cross, donate here.
Regards,
Steve

Thanks for mentioning that. I'm making a donation to Unicef right now. And my employer has a "corporate giving" program which I will be taking advantage of to have them match my donation. :-)

here

Oh but you can!

When you add up the casualties from Gulf War I ~158,000 and the casualties from the latest conflict ~98,000 you can easily match the numbers from the typhone. The difference is that humans planned and carried these things and not mother nature.

Donate!.

According to the United Nations report on child welfare, the USA and most other Western nations received a passing grade.

Why are you singling out China above the Western nations that don't receive a passing grade? According to UNICEF, the situation in China is improving. For that matter, ~1,400 children die of abuse and neglect in the USA every year, and it may be getting worse. I don't care if the UN considers that a "pass", I certainly don't, and my original claim stands: abuse is rampant in the USA too. You'll note that I'm backing up what I say with links to statistics... are you going to do likewise, or just make vague references?

Are you Chinese? Now, I get it.

I'm British actually. Are you a xenophobe? Now I get it.

If you really have enough money to play and donate, please consider a worthy cause.

Personally, my donations to this cause is of a magnitude that bars me from going much out and makes me think twice before wasting money on non-essential items.

I'm posting anon as I'm not donating nor posting to harvest personal acknowledgement.

Remember, for 15$ is nothing to us.
It's school for six months for a child.

I can't find the statistic, but for young people, the suicide rate I believe is quite a bit higher

You have it backwards. Japan's overall suicide rate is near the top of Western countries, though not the highest. Probably around the same as US (I can't find the overall statistics right now). Their youth suicide rate is among the lowest (half the rate of the US for males, though higher for females). It is the middle-aged salarymen that have burnt themselves out working crazy hours for no compensation or recognition that push the suicide rate up in Japan.

I'm afaid you're wrong.

http://www.unicef.org/graca/patterns.htm

"Patterns in conflict:
Civilians are now the target"

"Civilian fatalities in wartime have climbed from 5 per cent at the turn of the century ... to more than 90 per cent in the wars of the 1990s."

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=sep 91lopez

"Not so clean"

'The U.S. strategy of Air-Land Battle closely resembles "total war."'

Ok, I'll give this question my best shot.

Saddam was mostly contained. The sanctions were flawed on many levels, but they did have the positive effect of basically containing Saddam and limiting his ability to make WMD. The other thing that helped was that we prevented him from killing Kurds, a group that was a major target of his back in the 80's. Nevertheless, I still think there are actions other than war that would have been more helpful:

1. Work on strenghening resistance movements. The CIA has a long history and lots of experience with this; they have successfully overthrown governments in Nicaragua, Panama and other places. This still may not have been enough to lead to Saddam being overthrown from within, but at least it would have prepared the way for an invasion later on, if it became necessary. As I stated above, Saddam was basically contained and was not killing near as many people as he had been in the 80's.

2. Invade only the Southern (mostly Shiite) Iraq. Of course this has notable drawbacks in that you may be pitting one ethnic group against another, but this solution has seemed to work well for the Kurds who enjoyed relative peace and autonomy after the Gulf War. At least it would have reduced Saddam's power and influence and would have minimized his access to oil. Additionally, the Shiia population has suffered considerably under Saddam and they stand to gain much more by supporting the US than the Sunni do, so presumably, that would have been easier than what the US has done in invading all of Iraq.

3. Overhaul the whole sanctions program. It's fairly well documented that the sanctions were mostly a failure in that they prevented food from getting into Iraq (yes, the Oil for Food program did help somewhat, but it was rife with corruption and it had a huge backlog that really reduced its effectiveness). Saddam capitalized on this failure and thousands of Iraqis starved because of them. If we had done what we could to minimize the humanitarian situation in Iraq, Saddam would have had less of an excuse for the condition his country was in and pro-democracy movements would have had a much better chance.


Of course, it's very possible that none of these measures would have been necessary if we hadn't supported Saddam in the '80s against Iran, but that's for another post.

You're right. We are voting for President, but John Kerry comments make him look like an altar boy. I just wanted to point out that he likes to talk the talk, but never walks the walk.

I wouldn't call the sacrifices our servicemen & women have made unnecessary. Saddam is history. He certainly acted like he had WMDs. He won't kill again.

The UN sanctions against Iraq have been lifted. According to Unicef , those sanctions are partially responsible for 500,000 deaths among children between 1991 and 1999. That's about 5000 kids a month. At that rate, our involvement in Iraq has saved over 90000 Iraqi children. For each soldier lost, we have saved 90 kids. That's not a sacrifice made in vain.

This is a horrible idea. People won't want to pay for something they used to get for free. If implemented people will avoid this system like the plague. Why would you put at risk your money to use a service that used to be almost free?

I have TWO alternatives for people who might consider using this system. If you want spam free communication, set up a web page using PHP and get people to communicate with you through that after recognizing a word or a Yahoo-style muffled image. If you feel you have too much money, donate it to the United Nations Children Fund. But don't be an idiot and burden the community by supporting a system that intentionally jacks up the price of communicating via e-mail beyond its true cost.

People who would waste money on a system like this aren't socialists because they would be supporting the higher cost of e-mail for everyone, they aren't capatalists because they would be fostering overpriced services, they're just idiots.

Unicef, UN, and Amnisty International can all bite me with their anti-American spew.

That's funny, because there was nothing anti-american in my post. I simply named the 2 countries on earth who refused to ratify the declaration on the rights of children.

so, you're saying that kids of Iran, Iraq (two years ago), Afghanistan (3 years ago) Syria, and the like all have a right to privacy?

Yes, they had a right to it.
Maybe their rights were being violated...but they had rights.

Where's the UN on the Sudan? Rwanda?

When the genocides started in Rwanda in 1994, the U.N. tried to move in with a peacekeeping force, but the move was blocked by the U.S. because they didn't think the deathtoll of hundreds of thousands of africans was high enough to risk U.S. soldier casualties that might result from their participation.

Where's Unicef on female genital mutilation?

Here.

Children don't have a "right" to privacy.

In all the countries of the world, except the United States of America and Somalia, they do.

Article 16

1. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.

This is what UNICEF is up to in Iraq, compiling kernels and building distros. Next time they come round for donations, pop a freshly burned distro DVD in their collection tin.

(Some cash to provide drinkable water, food, clothing and shelter might be nice too. )

Did you even bother to read the links before replying? The sources they're cacheing, the ones to which I linked, are the mainstream Washington Post (conservative rag), New York Times (liberal rag), and some independent journalists.

You cannot even compare Iraq's totalitarian "socialism" with today's defining examples of socialist states.

The term "socialism" is an unfortunate catch-all for what has become a broad spectrum of political systems, ranging from totalitarian dictatorships (some of these despots supported by the US, such as China) all the way over to "soft" socialist states, such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain, Canada, and last, but not least, The United States of America.

Yes, the USA is a socialist state, by definition, because of its huge social spending policy, and that approximately half its voters belong to a socialist party known as the Democrats.

The other half, Republicans, disavow socialism, but exhibit strong socialistic tendencies by the very fact they accept huge quantities of social pr0k spending each year, on seniors, medical, corporate welfare, etc.

And how, dear AC troll, exactly did the U.S. "reduce" death and destruction? Did you include the twelve years of U.S.-demanded sanctions, which the U.N. estimated killed over 500,000 children alone in your estimation? Did you include the estimated 10,000 civilian deaths in Gulf War II?

How is it that Americans rationalize all this death as somehow being okay? When Saddam orders a few thousand deaths with WMD, it's justification for a unilateral invasion and take-over of a nation. When Bill Clinton and George Bush order up war and sanctions, it's somehow okay. But when a despot, fallen out of favor with the U.S., does it, its major crime. Somebody please explain this to me?

you, like 99.9% of the world's entire population, are absolutely unable to understand and/or see some very basic concepts and facts of international policy related to Iraq.

Let me refresh your memory. Over 10 years ago, when France, Germany, U.S. and all other U.N. constituants voted for the embargo on Iraq, they essentially signed the death certificates of thousands upon thousands of starving Iraqi children every single month. For 10 fucking years this has been going on and NO ONE, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, has done ANYTHING concrete to put an end to this. People see bombs, planes, tanks and "the big invasion" as the worst thing Iraq has endured over the last 10 years, WAKE THE FUCK UP, you clueless masses, IRAQ, HAS ALREADY been at war for over 10 years.

You may agree or disagree, approve or disapprove, hide behind the same old rehashed conspiracy theories behind the U.S.'s motives for going there. But in the end, this invasion is the very very first chance for Iraq at a brighter future. Even if only U.S. companies obtain Iraqi contracts, guess where that U.S. money is guna go? The Iraqi PEOPLE. Not to some dictator who constantly remains eager to build himself new pools and palaces, while his children starve.

This is not about getting rid of all oppressive regimes in the world. This is about fixing a mess that the U.S. and Europe started over a decade ago, it is about bringing closure to a campaign that had been started back in 1989 that may have ephemerously freed the Kurds, but has also immediately thrown the Iraqi People in the middle of economic sanctions and subsequent starvation, under a dictator that never ever gave a shit about his People, all to see the U.N. bitch, moan, and do absolutely nothing concrete for 10 years to hold saddam accountable and lift sanctions. For 10 years, the Iraq situation has been a can of worms no leader in the world has been willing to open, while U.S. and Europe enjoyed a prosperous economic expansion.

Even if saddam was never himself involved with terrorist activities, his regime has set the stage to feed extremist Muslim movements with the hate, anger and desperation they so direly need to formulate their anti-Occident brainwash and bring-in new recruits. Until now, if you're an Iraqi struggling to make ends meet to feed your family, here were your only two options at a better life:

• join saddam's army and be guaranteed 3 meals a day.
• join bin laden's army and guarantee your family a hefty reward after your death.

Why would young, strong Iraqi Men NOT choose one of those two routes? For all they knew, they'd be fighting the western cultures that oppress them.

My guess is these are the real reasons why we went to war with Iraq. Sure this administration's lack of credibility sticks out like a sore fucking thumb in this whole mess, what fucking WMD? what fucking 9/11? But this all goes back to what i started this post with: 99.9% of people in the world are clueless numbnuts who just LIVE for hair-brained conspiracy theories to make simple sense out of a complicated mess. From there, it isn't hard to see why the U.S. administration tried to rally their citizens and the rest of the world with simple concepts simpletons could grok: "WMD, 9/11".

How did we get here? Simple. For decades Arab countries have been the bitch to either one of two entities: Capitalist Factions and Communist Factions. Since Arab countries never evolved to even simple forms of democracy, no ruler of Iran or Iraq ever was truly accountable for their actions, and was therefore free to more or less secretely broker deals with the U.S., Europe or the USSR. Russians were racing for oil interests thru Iran, Americans thru Iraq, who all sat back and watched Arab Brothers kill oneanother, while feeding them weapons.

Arab countries have GOT to demo

How the "sactions are killing millions of Iraqi babies" stories were bogus.

Well, you'd have to take that one up with UNICEF as they are the ones that did the extensive research that led to those facts.

Legally... well can we dispense with legalities, since in this case, the law is an ass. Ethically, we should be looking to international conventions of human rights to base our judgements of human behaviour, and rights are always a question of balance. From the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child:

Article 3
1. In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.

So I'd say that even in systems where the ethics include strong property rights, the rights of a hungry child take precedence, and it would be a violation of that child's right to adequate nutrition to allow her to starve in sight of full apple trees, regardless of property rights. While the CRC is a document for nation states, the full spirit of it applies to all adults everywhere (unless you're a complete blithering statist), and so each of us is individually responsible for it, even the sick bastard with full apple trees who wants to beat a hungry child for eating one.

I appreciate your attempt to contain human rights within the framework of property rights, but a system founded on property will never be fair to the unpropertied, no matter how hard you try to put in checks and balances. Arguing for some naturalized property right that transcends human rights is an ideological position that suggests I should like my stuff and power more than people.

Human rights are inalienable, property rights beyond those needed to sustain human rights are optional.

Disks are physical devices that you buy from the store, and if you can't use all of that device because someone else is using it without your permission, then I call that theft.

If a spammer walked out of your server room, hard drive under arm, yeah that's theft. Information clog you can filter and delete? That's vandalism, since it interferes with your productivity and wears your drives, but it can be recovered from and prevented, without having to replace a missing drive. A loose analogy: you own a building and put up a mural, some loser overpaints it with a crappy graffito, has he stolen your wall, your reputation, your view? No, he's vandalized it; paint it and move on.

My case: accusing spammers with "vandalism" is a stronger argument than "theft", because it's more accurate, it doesn't commoditize my time or information, and it's just as bad an affront if not worse.

The world population currently stands at over 6 billion, and growing. If only 17% of the world uses simply one extra IP, then your supply is exhausted.

Let's put this in perspective. With more than one third of world's population lacking proper sanitation and nearly third of the world lacking access to commercial energy, I sincerely doubt the whole population would need even a single IP.

Call me an optimist, but I think the Save Farscape [savefarscape.com] campaign has the ability to bring this thing back.

No, they don't. It doesn't have a prayer. Practical matters prevent it- Producers, directors, crew, actors/actresses all go their separate ways.

Second, let's not forget that the ONLY reason TV shows exist is to SELL ADVERTISING. When the advertisers go "hey, this show is only watched by a bunch of nerds, everyone else thinks it's stupid, sorry, we'll advertise with someone else", guess what? It gets dropped. Why do you think the VAST majority of TV shows are NEVER -continued- on another network?

Are you seriously blinded to the point that you think a science fiction show that FAILED on a -network dEDICATED to science fiction- will have even a prayer?

The concept of donating money to 'save' a TV show, which is at best entertainment, at worst a device invented PURELY to make money. It disgusts me that people are so loaded with money that they prioritize a MONEY MAKING DEVICE over helping the homeless, feeding starving children, curing various diseases, etc. Try getting off your fucking couch and building a house with all your new-found spare time, instead of popping pimples waiting for the browser to load the "people who can't let go" webboard.

I guarantee you'll feel better, meet some cool people, and be healthier to boot.

I did hang up one of the posters [watchfarscape.com] on my door.

Sad that people will protest a TV show but not a war and the continuous stripping of their personal freedom and rights.

Baa baa, little sheep.

This first piss is brought to you by UNICEF and supporting organisations.

Please donate and help children around to world to urinate gracefully! Thanks!

The United Nations Population Fund (link)

Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS (link)

United Nations Children's Fund aka UNICEF (link)

UN's work on women's rights (link)

UN Commission on Sustainable Development (link)

United Nations Environment Programme (link)

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (link)

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (link)

One would HOPE that
that posters have a vague familiarity with the UN before launching such a broadside.

Skeletal Fluorosis - A crippling bone disease caused by excessive consumption of fluoride
This is what I mentioned in my troll.

and the best yet Unicef wow i didn't know unicef had an anti fluride campain

I still havn't found clear stats on deaths caused McD's &co. or the name of the hormone/enzime or whetever released by fat cells that makes you hungry.

You should take a look at the Canadian system.

• Canada has an infant mortality rate of 6 per thousand live births compared to 7 for the United States.
• Canada has an under five years infant mortality rate of 6 per thousand live births compared to 8 for the U.S.
• Canada has 2 deaths per thousand annually for children under 5 years. The U.S. has 31.

You should take a look at the Canadian system.

• Canada has an infant mortality rate of 6 per thousand live births compared to 7 for the United States.
• Canada has an under five years infant mortality rate of 6 per thousand live births compared to 8 for the U.S.
• Canada has 2 deaths per thousand annually for children under 5 years. The U.S. has 31.

One disturbing trend is an inverse relationship between wealth(social success) and number of children. Sucessful families with 1.2 children (below the replacement level, their genes are effectively selected against). Poverty level people having 3.6 children (geneticaly sucessfull).

Considering that about 16% of the children in the least developed countries die at an age under 5 years (and in industrialized countries it is 0.006%) this looks a little less "disturbing" I guess.

Stephan

It is not necessary to go abroad to make something useful for the world.

As you live in a democracy, you can encourage the people you voted for to change some politics that the USA have and that are the source of a lot of pain in the poor countries.

The first things that come to my mind are the number of international treaties that the USA have not signed :

1. the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

2. the Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC). All countries except for the United States and Somalia have ratified it.

3. the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

4. the ban on antipersonnel landmines (the Ottawa Treaty)

5. the Kyoto Protocol

6. the Law of the Sea Treaty

All those treaties, if signed and applied, can make the world a better place for poor citizens of poor countries.

There are also a number of treaties thatthe US has stripped to signe them.

NOTE : Don't get me wrong, I am not your basic anti-US socialist european. In the numerous talks I had with people after the 11th september, I was always blaming those who said "It's their fault ! Good for them". I was (am) also defending the action against the taliban (except for the use of some nasty bombs).
But, being a supporter of the US must not hide that it's a BIG SHAME to have not signed, ratified and applied those treaties at least !

PS : sorry if some info is outdated, do not hesitate to notify me.

To begin with, it is arguably good that this happened. The West is wide open to suicidal terrorist attacks, and if there were ever such an attack with a nuclear bomb, things would be a lot worse. Many people have been warning about this for some time. Now at least some preventative measures will be taken, and the risks will be reduced. Nuclear bombs are actually trivial to make if you have weapons-grade uranium (still a large "if"); so the risk is significant. Bin Laden has been trying to arm himself with nukes for years.

If we want to understand what happened, we should ask what the terrorists' motivations were for attacking. The terrorists seem to hate America for its actions against Muslims in Palestine and Iraq (see below), and Islam teaches that Muslims should aid other Muslims. So, what have been America's actions?

The Palestinians have been brutalized by the Israelis. Consider that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that rarely had a people been in so obvious need of international protection--last November, after seeing children whose eyes had been blown out by Israeli bullets and watching 40000 Palestinians kept under curfew so that 235 Israelis could go about their business (in Hebron). The Palestinians have repeatedly asked for international observers, but always had this blocked by Israel and America. Palestinians have long been tortured in Israel (this is government- sanctioned). The recent UN report headed by American ex-senator Mitchell made various recommendations, which were entirely accepted by the Palestinian Authority and rejected by Israel. Basically all other independent reports conclude that the Palestinians are treated abominably, including severe economic deprivations. (This is not to say that Israel does not have valid security concerns or grievances against Palestinians.)

Israel can only act this way because of American support. Indeed, America supplies advanced arms, gives Israel's six million citizens billions each year, and is often virtually the sole supporter of Israel in UN discussions-- such as discussions about Israel's violations of UN resolutions. So America is an accomplice. Even the British Foreign Secretary has now acknowledged that "One of the factors which helps breed terrorism is the anger which many people in [the Middle East] feel at events over the years in Palestine."

Some people have claimed that Bill Clinton tried to achieve peace, and so America should not be held to blame. But Israel only exists because of American support. And America, under Clinton, did not use this power. Under Bush Sr., things were different: Bush Sr. threatened to withhold $10 billion in loans (strictly, loan guarantees), if Israel remained brutal. This worked, and led to a viable peace process. The process could have remained on track if America had forced Israel to keep it signed word.

In Iraq, American-dictated sanctions ban anything that could conceivably be used for the military. For example, pencils contain carbon and carbon is often used in nuclear reactors; so pencils were banned. The sanctions are horrid. The sanctions regime is always supervised by a non-American (for political/PR reasons), and the supervisors have always quit in disgust after about a year, which says a lot. Iraq's infrastructure and economy are being crushed, at enormous cost. For example, according to UN estimates, the sanctions have resulted in the death of half a million children under five. (None of his is to suggest that Saddam is undeserving of a very tight leash, nor that this could be applied without the people suffering significantly.)

What does bin Laden say? Even if he was not directly involved in the attacks (which seems unlikely), he is a leading member of the terrorist network; so his words very probably count for something. And in the past he seems to have spoken more or less honestly about his intentions. Moreover, his words have motivated those who carried out the attacks. In a 1999 interview, he said he wanted to instigate "... jihad against the Jews and the Americans" and, citing the sanctions against Iraq, he added, "Our enemy is the crusader alliance led by America, Britain, and Israel." And in 1998, he and four others signed the World Islamic Front Statement, which advocates killing Americans for three reasons: America's support of Israel, America's killing of over a million Iraqis (a figure consistent with UN estimates), and America's stationing its armed forces in the Arabian peninsula. Regarding the third reason, the complaint seems to be partly that America is using the peninsula as a base for aggression against Iraq--i.e. the second and third reasons are closely related--and partly that Muslims consider the peninsula holy and many do not want non-Muslims permanently residing there. (Bin Laden is Saudi Arabian, and first became a terrorist mainly for the third reason. Later, he drew many followers, and the other reasons became prime.)

So, this is not an attack on democracy and freedom per se, as George Bush claims. Nor is it a culture-based "clash of civilizations", as some commentators have tried to claim (alluding to a 1993 essay by Samuel Huntington). Nor is it an attack based on spiteful envy of American wealth and military might, as some others have groundlessly assumed. This is an attack by Muslim fanatics on non-Muslims who have been brutalizing Muslims.

(Some people point out that Muslims sometimes also brutalize other Muslims. This is true: any group of people will have internal conflicts, sometimes very severe--as here--but still often pull together when attacked from outside. This is generally true of families, for example. It is also true of Americans--as this September has shown. It is something to be proud of.)

The terrorist attacks appear to have opened an enormous well-spring of Muslim anti-American feelings. Muslim demonstrations against America have been widely reported. The demonstrators, though, have generally said that they are against the terrorist attacks. But they, and a great many other Muslims, share the hatred felt by the terrorists, for the reasons given above.

Many Americans seem greatly confused by widespread Muslim hatred. To them, the claim that America desires to control the world is ludicrous. Especially since the end of the Cold War, America has tended to interfere in the affairs of other countries only under extreme circumstances. The Balkans is a good example--where Europe fretted fecklessly while tens of thousands were killed or raped. Almost all Americans simply want the world to develop in peace and prosperity--and, incredibly, they ask for nothing in return despite being the world's greatest guarantor of this. But, for many Muslims, it does not look that way. America helps a state with which it is friendly--Israel--and tries to squash a state that is very threatening and sinister--Iraq--and it ends up looking imperialistic.

Regarding the terrorists' motivations, it is interesting to compare the reports given by American and British mass media. Broadly, the American media has portrayed the terrorists as crazies who are against economic modernization and Western culture. Broadly, the British media tends to say that the terrorists are at least rational and that America partly inspired the hatred that they feel by its support of Israel. (Of course British media still strongly condemn the attacks and support the American people.)

Britain has not really supported America's actions in Israel/Palestine. In fact, the previous Foreign Secretary (Robin Cook) was fired in part because he was too blatant in his support for Palestinians. But Britain has--almost alone (to my knowledge)--both aided and supported America's actions against Iraq. The British media thus cites the main Muslim grievance in which Britain is blameless and largely ignores the other. The American media ignores both. Even considering some criticism is unacceptable, it seems.

The media made a lot of sacrifices when the terrorists struck. Hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising were lost as commercials were pulled from TV to make way for more news. And it was clear that many commentators very much had their hearts in their work. I still believe, however, that the media has done a disservice to people by failing to present the terrorists' true motivations--even if they disagreed with them.

The big question now is what can/will be done to make things safer. Despite all the hype, suicide bombers are rare. But, there are about a billion Muslims in the world; so even if only one in a 100000 becomes a bomber, that's 10000 overall. More people will now want to become bombers, though, for three reasons: the success of the attacks on America, the hero status often accorded suicide bombers (in Palestine as well), and the continuing despair that many Muslims feel about the plight of Palestinians and Iraqis.

One obvious way to increase Western safety is to inspire less hatred and give Muslims some hope for a better future. It was the crushing of hope by Israel that led to the recent spate of suicide bombers there. America is plainly well aware of this. Thus, although in the first week Israeli PM Sharon was stating that he still wanted to conquer the Palestinians, on September 18th he did an about-face--obviously under great American pressure. Real peace needs to be brought to Palestine. Arafat wants it, but with land; Sharon only wants victory, but might give in; and there are extremists in both Palestine and Israel who will try hard to derail peace. So lasting peace will hard to get, but maybe ... maybe. As for Iraq actions, this is under American control; so sanctions should ease rapidly ... maybe.

In addition to these diplomatic efforts, there is going to be a military effort. The one purely-American purely-military option that I've seen that might potentially do something is to nuke Afghanistan. This would be politically very difficult. It would also inspire so much hatred in the Muslim world that for each terrorist killed, several more would be spawned.

Some people have suggested heavy (non-nuclear) bombing of Afghanistan, to force the Taliban into expelling the terrorists. There are no substantial military or political targets, however, and the Afghan economy is now virtually nonexistent, thanks to international sanctions and an extended drought. The UN estimates that by November (after snow starts falling), over five million Afghans will be dependent on food aid--out of a population of 20 million. So if the objective is to crush Afghans economically, stopping food aid would do more than any bombs. In fact, this is now happening, as relief agencies flee the country out of fear of military action. Actual bombing seems pointless, then, except perhaps as PR. Will a famine (induced by bombing or threat thereof) compel the Taliban into expelling the terrorists? This is dubious: the Taliban apparently shelter the terrorists because of an Islamic custom--if someone seeks refuge in your tribe, you have to protect him, regardless of the cost (the Taliban actually have little interest in the world outside Afghanistan.) Inducing a famine is also risky: if a million die, it will fuel more Muslim hatred. Would it be moral? You decide.

Some commentators have suggested that a large-scale military operation against Afghanistan might trigger so much popular anger that it destabilises some other Muslim countries. I cannot comment on this, but it should be clear, in any case, that such operations will do vastly more harm than good. Most senior people in the American government now apparently agree.

There has been much discussion about sending special forces into Afghanistan (likely supported by small-scale bombing). This requires intelligence on where the terrorists are hiding. Indeed, by now many of the terrorists will be dispersed among the population: good intelligence from the ground is essential for successful special-forces action against them. America apparently does not have this intelligence itself. It might try to bludgeon the ruling Taliban into supplying such intelligence, but it is very unlikely that the Taliban could be relied upon to act in good faith, if they acted.

The Taliban, however, are very close with Pakistan (see below). So if America were to work with Pakistan for intelligence, it might get somewhere. The president of Pakistan has pledged full support, but this might mean little. The support has to come from the people on the ground, and there have been many demonstrations in Pakistan against helping America. I know of three reasons for these demonstrations. First, Pakistanis are Muslims (95%) and they blame America for what is happening to Muslims in Palestine and Iraq. Second, they don't like being bullied by Westerners generally. The third reason is more involved; briefly, it's as follows.

The current border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is actually just a line of control (the Durand line), from a treaty that expired about five years ago. It was never clear what was to happen when the treaty expired: likely Pashtoonistan--an area overlapping both Pakistan and Afghanistan--was to be made into a state. The Pashtoon people make up nearly half of all Afghans, and they control Afghanistan; so likely Pashtoonistan and Afghanistan would become one. The effect would thus be to have Pakistan cede territory to Afghanistan. (A rough analogy might be how Britain ceded Hong Kong to China after the expiration of a 100-year treaty/lease. The Durand treaty was drawn up in the 1890s, when Pakistan was still a part of India.)

Pakistanis, especially in the military, are very reluctant to cede a large part of their country to Afghanistan. That's why Pakistan created the Taliban. The Taliban were given both military and religious training in Pakistan. They also got lots of arms and money from Pakistan, which is why they were able to conquer (most of) Afghanistan. They were largely controlled by Pakistan, though. And under Pakistani control, they did not force the issue of Pashtoonistan. (Lately, Pakistani control has weakened.) Additionally, having some Afghan territory partially under its control gave Pakistan some extra security from the threat of neighbouring India.

America has addressed this by telling Pakistan that unless it helps, America might rid Pakistan of its nuclear installations and support India militarily: in effect, saying that Pakistan would be liable to lose a majority of its territory (to India) rather than a minority (to Afghanistan). The president of Pakistan has made a televised speech warning people "bad results could put in danger our territorial integrity." This should help to focus the minds of those in the military, especially since Pakistan has a military government. Yet, it has had little effect on the populace, who are more motivated by sympathy for fellow Muslims. Will the low-ranking Pakistani soldiers on the ground go along and will they get enough intelligence from Afghanistan with little help from the populace?

My guess is that Pakistan will pretend to go along, and perhaps even help find a way to get bin Laden--which is good for PR, but not for really eradicating the terrorist network. Maybe America will eventually help to formalize Pakistan's borders, which would facilitate greater Pakistani support. I have not, however, seen this discussed publicly.

There also seems to be a common view that the Taliban should be removed from government. Indeed, it would be very difficult to eradicate the terrorist network without doing this. One approach would be to strongly support the anti-Taliban forces that currently control under 10% of (northern) Afghanistan. (This support might include bombing, but only on a small scale.) Starved of external military support, the Taliban should crumble quickly. A complicating factor is that any large military campaign in the Afghan winter is very difficult, and winter arrives in about October. Most likely, though, all this will be unnecessary: the Taliban should fall on their own, now that they are no longer propped up by Pakistan. What is in any case important is to avoid making it seem that this is American imperialism, which would unite the populace and draw wide Muslim anger.

The military action, whatever form it takes, will make it difficult for the terrorists to train or actively maintain their network in Afghanistan. Capturing many terrorists, though, seems unrealistic. The threatened mass bombing has made this even more difficult, since many Afghans have fled population centres for safety: there seems no good way to find a terrorist, who looks and acts ordinary, in their midst. If the Taliban are removed from government, though, perhaps more Afghans would then supply intelligence.

There is also a lot of detective work underway. Within America, and some other countries, this seems to be on track for some success, for identifying terrorists and also for hindering their financing. There appear to be many suicidal Islamic terrorists in the network that attacked America, though. Estimates are rough, but there could be several hundred who have deeply infiltrated the West. As an example, one of the highjackers had spent several years in Germany getting a technical degree. The network has supposedly spread to roughly 40 countries, which will hinder tracing it. Also, there is no real command structure: there is only a network (like the Internet is a network) with some people more influential than others; so even if someone like bin Laden is caught, the network would hardly be eradicated (a bit like taking out a few major nodes of the Internet would do little). Tracing the network is thus going to take a long effort, but should succeed.

Diplomatic, military, and detective efforts could also be supplemented with religious efforts, though I have not seen this discussed much. Bin Laden has claimed that he is instigating a jihad. Jihads were fought many centuries ago, against the crusaders. The jihad concept was then largely forgotten. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the CIA looked for ways to help motivate the Afghans to fight (this was during the Cold War; so the CIA was arguably justified). One of they ways the CIA came up with was the revival of the long-abandoned notion of jihad. It worked (although the defining event in the Afghan-Soviet war was probably America's decision to supply the Afghans with shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles).

The Koran, though, teaches that a jihad should not harm women and children. And bin Laden himself said (in 1999) that "God ... has prohibited the killing of women and children unless the women are active fighters." Fighting the Soviet army fits with this. Crashing planes into the World Trade Center does not. Of course, religious fanatics can twist anything ("America is a democracy; so the people are directly responsible for what their government does; so the women killed in the World Trade Center were active fighters."-- maybe?). But I believe that it should be possible to use the Koran, and perhaps even Muslim clerics, to motivate Afghans against the terrorists.

What are the overall conclusions? In the short term, there is small, but real, risk of another terrorist assault, against America or perhaps Britain (or Israel). In the medium term, the terrorist network will be attacked and largely eradicated, and America's resolve will make all countries very hesitant about sponsoring other terrorist networks. Additionally, there will be widespread, permanent, increases in security measures and both domestic and international intelligence operations. Individual terrorist incidents, however, do not require a sophisticated network or large resources (remember Oklahoma City). It is not realistic to expect to be able to prevent them all. In the long term, then, we also need to lessen the causes of Muslim grievances, even if it means facing up to our past mistakes.

Douglas J. Keenan

Some sources:
The 1999 interview with Osama bin Laden-- http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/tra nscript_binladen1_990110.html
The 1998 World Islamic Front Statement-- http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatw a.htm
Some insights into Afghanistan-- http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/June/Afghan/in dex.html
The home page of the Palestinian Authority, with many more related links-- http://www.pna.gov.ps/
Links to insightful news stories on Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, etc.-- http://www.economist.com/countries/
A UNICEF news release on child mortality in Iraq-- http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm
A BBC report entitled "Explaining Arab Anger" [September 19th]-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east /newsid_1552000/1552900.stm

To begin with, it is arguably good that this happened. The West is wide open to suicidal terrorist attacks, and if there were ever such an attack with a nuclear bomb, things would be a lot worse. Many people have been warning about this for some time. Now at least some preventative measures will be taken, and the risks will be reduced. Nuclear bombs are actually trivial to make if you have weapons-grade uranium (still a large "if"); so the risk is significant. Bin Laden has been trying to arm himself with nukes for years.

If we want to understand what happened, we should ask what the terrorists' motivations were for attacking. The terrorists say that they hate America for its actions against Muslims in Palestine and Iraq, and Islam teaches that Muslims should aid other Muslims. So, what have been America's actions?

The Palestinians have been brutalized by the Israelis. Consider that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that rarely had a people been in so obvious need of international protection--last November, after seeing children whose eyes had been blown out by Israeli bullets and watching 40000 Palestinians kept under curfew so that 235 Israelis could go about their business (in Hebron). The Palestinians have repeatedly asked for international observers, but always had this blocked by Israel and America. Palestinians have long been tortured in Israel (this is government- sanctioned). The recent UN report headed by American ex-senator Mitchell made various recommendations, which were entirely accepted by the Palestinian Authority and rejected by Israel. Basically all other independent reports conclude that the Palestinians are treated abominably, including severe economic deprivations. (This is not to say that Israel does not have valid security concerns or grievances against Palestinians.)

Israel can only act this way because of American support. Indeed, America supplies advanced arms, gives Israel's six million citizens billions each year, and is often virtually the sole supporter of Israel in UN discussions-- such as discussions about Israel's violations of UN resolutions. So America is an accomplice. Even the British Foreign Secretary has now acknowledged that "One of the factors which helps breed terrorism is the anger which many people in [the Middle East] feel at events over the years in Palestine."

Some people have claimed that Bill Clinton tried to achieve peace, and so America should not be held to blame. But Israel only exists because of American support. And America, under Clinton, did not use this power. Under Bush Sr., things were different: Bush Sr. threatened to withhold $10 billion in loans (strictly, loan guarantees), if Israel remained brutal. This worked: the Oslo peace process. The process could have remained on track if America had decided to force Israel to keep it signed word.

In Iraq, American-dictated sanctions ban anything that could conceivably be used for the military. For example, pencils contain carbon and carbon is often used in nuclear reactors; so pencils were banned. The sanctions are horrid. The sanctions regime is always supervised by a non-American (for political/PR reasons), and the supervisors have always quit in disgust after about a year, which says a lot. Iraq's infrastructure and economy are being crushed, at enormous cost. For example, according to UN estimates, the sanctions have resulted in the death of half a million children under five. (None of his is to suggest that Saddam is undeserving of a very tight leash, nor that this could be applied without the people suffering significantly.)

What does bin Laden say? Even if he was not directly involved in the attacks (which seems unlikely), he is a leading member of the terrorist network; so his words very probably count for something. And in the past he seems to have spoken more or less honestly about his intentions. In a 1999 interview, he said he wanted to instigate "... jihad against the Jews and the Americans" and, citing the sanctions against Iraq, he added, "Our enemy is the crusader alliance led by America, Britain, and Israel." And in 1998, he and four others signed the World Islamic Front Statement, which advocates killing Americans for three reasons: America's support of Israel, America's killing of over a million Iraqis (a figure consistent with UN estimates), and America's stationing its armed forces in the Arabian peninsula. Regarding the third reason, the main complaint seems to be that America is using the peninsula as a base for aggression against Iraq--i.e. the second and third reasons are closely related--though it is also true that Muslims consider the peninsula holy and many do not want non-Muslims permanently residing there.

The leader of the Taliban has also said why America was attacked: because America's cruel foreign policies perpetrated atrocities in Muslim countries.

So, this is not an attack on democracy and freedom per se, as George Bush claims. Nor is it a culture-based "clash of civilizations", as some commentators have tried to claim (alluding to a 1993 essay by Samuel Huntington). Nor is it an attack based on spiteful envy of American might, as some others have claimed. This is an attack by Muslim fanatics on non-Muslims who have been brutalizing Muslims. Many Muslims around the world have stated that they share the hatred felt by the terrorists, for the reasons given above, even if they strongly condemn the terrorist attacks.

(Some people point out that Muslims sometimes also brutalize other Muslims. This is true. Any group of people will have internal conflicts, occasionally very severe--as here--but still often pull together when attacked from outside. This is generally true of families, for example. It is also true of Americans--as this month has shown. It is something to be proud of.)

The terrorist attacks appear to have opened an enormous well-spring of Muslim anti-American feelings. Muslim demonstrations against America have been widely reported--even though demonstrators, when interviewed, have said they are against the terrorist attacks. In Indonesia (85% Muslim), gangs of extremists have been going into hotels searching for Americans.

Many Americans seem greatly confused by widespread Muslim hatred. To them, the claim that America desires to control the world is ludicrous. Especially since the end of the Cold War, America has tended to interfere in the affairs of other countries only under extreme circumstances. The Balkans is the prime example--where Europe fretted fecklessly while tens of thousands were killed or raped. Almost all Americans simply want the world to develop in peace and prosperity--and, incredibly, they ask for nothing in return despite being the world's greatest guarantor of this. But, for Muslims, it does not look that way. America helps a state with which it is friendly--Israel--and tries to squash a state that is very threatening and sinister--Iraq--and it ends up looking imperialistic.

Regarding the terrorists' motivations, it is interesting to compare the reports given by American and British mass media. I've spent many hours watching CNN and BBC World, and looked at several major newspapers in both America and Britain. Broadly, the American media has portrayed the terrorists as crazies who are against economic modernization and Western culture. Broadly, the British media tends to say that the terrorists are at least rational and that America inspired the hatred that they feel by its support of Israel. (Of course British media still condemn the attacks.)

Britain has not really supported America's actions in Israel/Palestine. In fact, the previous Foreign Secretary (Robin Cook) was fired in part because he was too blatant in his support for Palestinians. But Britain has--almost alone (to my knowledge)--both aided and supported America's actions against Iraq. The British media thus cites the main Muslim grievance in which Britain is blameless and largely ignores the other. The American media ignores both. Even considering some criticism is unacceptable, it seems.

The media made a lot of sacrifices when the terrorists struck. Hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising were lost as commercials were pulled from TV to make way for more news. And it was clear that many commentators very much had their hearts in their work. I still believe, however, that the media has done a disservice to people by failing to present the terrorists' true motivations--even if they disagreed with them.

The big question now is what can/will be done to make things safer. Despite all the hype, suicide bombers are rare. But, there are about a billion Muslims in the world; so even if only one in a 100000 becomes a bomber, that's 10000 overall. More people will now want to become bombers, though, for three reasons: the success of the attacks on America, the hero status often accorded suicide bombers (in Palestine as well), and the continuing despair that many Muslims feel about the plight of Palestinians and Iraqis.

One obvious way to increase Western safety is to inspire less hatred and give Muslims some hope for a better future. It was the crushing of hope by Israel that led to the recent spate of suicide bombers there. America is plainly well aware of this. Thus, although in the first week Israeli PM Sharon was stating that he still wanted to conquer the Palestinians, on September 18th he did an about-face--obviously under great American pressure. Real peace needs to be brought to Palestine. Arafat wants it, but with land; Sharon only wants victory, but might give in; and there are extremists in both Palestine and Israel who will try hard to derail peace. So lasting peace will hard to get, but maybe ... maybe. As for Iraq actions, this is under American control; so sanctions should ease rapidly ... maybe.

In addition to these diplomatic efforts, there is going to be a military effort. The one purely-American purely-military option that I've seen that might potentially do something is to nuke Afghanistan. This would be politically very difficult. It would also inspire so much hatred in the Muslim world that for each terrorist killed, several more would be spawned. So I don't believe that America will do this. (On the other hand, Russia wants to help generally. And Russia has an enormous grudge against Afghanistan for beating it the 1980s and even more now for Afghan support of the Chechnya rebels. Russian TV has recently been reporting that Russia plans to nuke Afghanistan. I've no idea what to make of this, but suspect, or hope, that nothing will actually happen.)

Some people have suggested heavy (non-nuclear) bombing of Afghanistan, to force the Taliban into expelling the terrorists. There are no substantial military or political targets, however, and the Afghan economy is now virtually nonexistent, thanks to international sanctions and an extended drought. The UN estimates that by November (after snow starts falling), five million Afghans will be dependent on food aid--out of a population of 20 million. So if the objective is to crush the economy, simply stopping food aid would do more than any bombs. In fact, this is now happening, as relief agencies flee the country out of fear of military action. Actual bombing seems pointless, then, except perhaps as PR. Will a famine (induced by bombing or threat thereof) compel the Taliban into expelling the terrorists? This is dubious: the Taliban apparently shelter the terrorists because of an Islamic custom--if someone seeks refuge in your tribe, you have to protect him, regardless of the cost (the Taliban actually have little interest in the world outside Afghanistan.) Inducing a famine is also risky: if a million die, it will fuel more Muslim hatred. Would it be moral? You decide.

There has been much discussion about sending special forces into Afghanistan. This requires intelligence on where the terrorists are hiding. Indeed, by now many of the terrorists will be dispersed among the population: good intelligence from the ground is essential for successful special-forces action against them. America apparently does not have this intelligence itself. It might try to bludgeon the ruling Taliban into supplying such intelligence, but it is uncertain, at best, that the Taliban should be relied upon to act in good faith, if they acted.

The Taliban, however, are very close with Pakistan (see below). So if America were to work with Pakistan for intelligence, it might get somewhere. The president of Pakistan has pledged full support, but this might mean little. The support has to come from the people on the ground, and there have been many demonstrations in Pakistan against helping America. I know of three reasons for these demonstrations. First, Pakistani's are Muslims (95%) and they blame America for what is happening to Muslims in Palestine and Iraq. Second, they don't like being bullied by Westerners generally. The third reason is more involved; briefly, it's as follows.

The current border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is actually just a line of control (the Durand line), from a treaty that expired about five years ago. It was never clear what was to happen when the treaty expired: likely Pashtoonistan--an area overlapping both Pakistan and Afghanistan--was to be made into a state. The Pashtoon people make up nearly half of all Afghans, and they control Afghanistan; so likely Pashtoonistan and Afghanistan would become one. The effect would thus be to have Pakistan cede territory to Afghanistan. (A rough analogy might be how Britain ceded Hong Kong to China after the expiration of a 100-year treaty/lease. The Durand treaty was drawn up in the 1890s, when Pakistan was still a part of India.)

Pakistanis, especially in the military, are very reluctant to cede a large part of their country to Afghanistan. That's why Pakistan created the Taliban. The Taliban were given both military and religious training in Pakistan. They also got lots of arms and money from Pakistan, which is why they were able to conquer (most of) Afghanistan. They were largely controlled by Pakistan, though. And under Pakistani control, they did not force the issue of Pashtoonistan. (Lately, Pakistani control has weakened.)

America has addressed this by telling Pakistan that unless it helps, America might rid Pakistan of its nuclear installations and support India militarily: in effect, saying that Pakistan would be liable to lose a majority of its territory (to India) rather than a minority (to Afghanistan). The president of Pakistan has made a televised speech warning people "bad results could put in danger our territorial integrity." This should help to focus the minds of those in the military, especially since Pakistan has a military government. Yet, it has had little effect on the populace, who are more motivated by sympathy for fellow Muslims. Will the low-ranking Pakistani soldiers on the ground go along and will they get enough intelligence from Afghanistan with little help from the populace?

My guess is that Pakistan will pretend to go along, and perhaps even help find a way to get bin Laden--which is good for PR, but not for really eradicating the terrorist network. Maybe America will eventually help to formalize Pakistan's borders, which would facilitate greater Pakistani support. I have not, however, seen this discussed publicly.

There also seems to be a common view that the Taliban should be forcibly removed from government. The likely approach here will be to strongly support the anti-Taliban forces that currently control under 10% of (northern) Afghanistan. (This support might include bombing, but only on a small scale.) Starved of external military support, the Taliban should crumble quickly. One complicating factor is that any large military campaign in the Afghan winter is very difficult, and winter arrives in about October. What is also important is to avoid making it seem as if this is American imperialism, which would unite the populace and draw wide Muslim anger.

The military action, whatever form it takes, will make it difficult for the terrorists to train or actively maintain their network in Afghanistan. Capturing many terrorists, though, seems unrealistic. The threatened mass bombing has made this even more difficult, since many Afghans have fled population centers for safety: there seems no good way to find a terrorist, who looks and acts ordinary, in their midst. If the Taliban are removed from government, though, perhaps more Afghans would then supply intelligence.

There is also a lot of detective work underway. Within America, and some other countries, this seems to be on track for some success, for identifying terrorists and also for choking their financing. There appear to be a large number of suicidal Islamic terrorists in the network that attacked America, though. Estimates are rough, but there could be a thousand who have deeply infiltrated the West. As an example, one of the highjackers had apparently spent several years in Germany getting a technical degree. The network has supposedly spread to roughly 40 countries, which will hinder tracing it. Also, there is no real command structure: there is only a network (like the Internet is a network) with some people more influential than others; so even if someone like bin Laden is caught, the network would hardly be eradicated (a bit like taking out a few major nodes of the Internet would do little). Tracing the network is thus going to take a long effort, but should succeed.

Diplomatic, military, and detective efforts could also be supplemented with religious efforts, though I have not seen this discussed much. Bin Laden has claimed that he is instigating a jihad. Jihads were fought many centuries ago, against the crusaders. The jihad concept was then largely forgotten. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the CIA looked for ways to help motivate the Afghans to fight (this was during the cold war; so the CIA was arguably justified). One of they ways the CIA came up with was the revival of the long-abandoned notion of jihad. It worked (although the defining event in the Afghan-Soviet war was probably America's decision to supply the Afghans with shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles).

The Koran, though, teaches that a jihad should not harm women and children. And bin Laden himself said (in 1999) that "God ... has prohibited the killing of women and children unless the women are active fighters." Fighting the Soviet army fits with this. Crashing planes into the World Trade Center does not. Of course, religious fanatics can twist anything ("America is a democracy; so the people are directly responsible for what their government does; so the women killed in the World Trade Center were active fighters."-- maybe?). But I believe that it should be possible to use the Koran, and perhaps even Muslim clerics, to motivate Afghans against the terrorists.

What are the overall conclusions? In the short term, there is small, but real, risk of another terrorist assault, against America or perhaps Britain (or Israel). In the medium term, the terrorist network will be attacked and largely eradicated, and America's resolve will make all countries very hesitant about sponsoring other terrorist networks. Additionally, there will be widespread, permanent, increases in security measures. Individual terrorist incidents, however, do not require a sophisticated network or large resources (remember Oklahoma City). It is not realistic to expect to be able to prevent them all. In the long term, then, we also need to lessen the causes of Muslim grievances, even if it means facing up to our past mistakes.

Some sources:
The 1999 interview with Osama bin Laden-- http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/tra nscript_binladen1_990110.html
The 1998 World Islamic Front Statement-- http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatw a.htm
Some insights into Afghanistan-- http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/June/Afghan/in dex.html
The home page of the Palestinian Authority, with many more related links-- http://www.pna.gov.ps/
Links to insightful news stories on Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, etc.-- http://www.economist.com/countries/
A UNICEF news release on child mortality in Iraq-- http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm
A BBC report entitled "Explaining Arab Anger" [September 19th]-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east /newsid_1552000/1552900.stm

Mines

Imagine taking over a land that has been at war or in hostile hands for the last 30 years, where all the forces involved strew millions of mines with no recovery plan or deactivation capabilities.

If the US really plans invading this god-forsaken place on groud, or furthermore, setting up a legitimate government, then they better have an extensive mine-clearing program.

Mines are very hard to deal with once they are planted. I should know, that was part of my job description when I did my stint in the good ol' US army (MOS 12B). Often, once-cleared areas will be "reset" when a large rainstorm or monsoon repositions the land.

Makes me wonder what this whole operation is going to result in...