Violence in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, was mounting at least as early as August 1993. UN force commander Lt. Col. Romeo Dallaire wrote to the DPKO in January of 1994 stating that he had a reliable source informing him of the preparations already in place for the commencement of the genocide (as well as an attack on the Belgian-supplied troops to provoke their withdrawal), but even in the face of this information, the DPKO, the Secretary General, the Security Council...everyone chose to do nothing.
There is no question that the international apathy was in part due to Rwanda's status: it is a land-locked country with no natural resources to make it worthwhile to invest in: there is no short-term benefit, never mind long-term.
But on the other hand, it points to a far more insidious problem at the UN: bureaucracy.
Traub seems to be among those who might be inclined to blame the UN mission leader and forces commander for the fiasco in Yugoslavia/Croatia; on the other hand they could be defended for sticking doggedly to the letter and law of their mission mandate.
Dallaire's account is filled with impassioned frustration at the administrative bumbling of the DPKO, the DPKO blames the bureaucracy around presentation to the Security Council, Boutros-Ghali blamed the member nations and the member nations blamed the Council. To me, the problem seems to be one of losing sight of the truth in human terms in order to try to rationalise a future response structure to a problem that will never be repeated. In Kuwait, Hussein tried to make himself ruler of the whole Arabian peninsular and to control the oil supplies; in Srebrenica and Kosov, Milosevic tried to rid himself off the ethnic minorities that "threatened" his power; and in Rwanda, the Interahamwe tried to destroy the Tutsis utterly for their representation of past Belgian oppression/colonisation. Each situation looks similar to the others but is unique because of the time and culture it took place in, so legislating for it and preparing for a repeat scenario is moot.
However, I am fast realising that I am in as much danger of becoming embroiled in these politics as any other writer because in writing we are only ever capable of dealing with theories and statistics, hearsay and second-hand information.
Whatever else may be true, the fact remains that the price of doing nothing is far higher than the price of acting but the world rarely sees it that way.
Traub explains the problem of the UN as a preference for peace over justice, and the cost of this preference is that the criminals escape justice for far too long (Milosevic was not prosecuted at the Hague until 1999, by which time he was responsible for the most appalling account of mass murder in Europe since the Holocaust including 7,500 males in Srebrenica alone and 800,000 Albanians in Kosovo), and peace is shattered in the process.
I am going to lay aside Traub's book unfinished. Not because it is not interesting, but because it represents a past that cannot be undone, and which learning about will only sadden and demoralise me. If I look to the future from under the cloud of the past, how can I make that future brighter?
From here on out I will return to human rights activism, instead of sticking to human rights history.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Politics: Power to the People (The Other Twin)
Somewhere, something has been lost.
If you've read the first twin, you may, like me, have noted a possible root cause of the horrifying saga of violence that followed, in 4 to 6 different countries, depending on geopolitical lines.
Simply put: the UN had no business or call to be in Somalia in 1993. The food crisis presented no threat to international peace or security, only to the country itself. Now I realise that may sound incredibly harsh, given that the local warring factions were slowly starving their fellow countrymen and women to death. But in a purely logical fashion the statement is correct. The fact that the chaos in Somalia continues to this day, including an internationally unrecognised government and Somali pirates patrolling international waters, is a testament to it.
So why was the UN there? Why did the US end up there?
The UN was there because of the Security Council, having no choice in the matter. The US was there because of the American people.
As I have noted before, in my post of "Half the Sky", politicians rarely - if ever - follow morals; they follow votes. Understandably, people saw the news flash images of myriads of starving Somali people and the pressure mounted.
Here then is the true power and the true peril of politics: one way or another, both are in the hands or at the mercy of the people.
When American sentiment pressured its government, the administration sent 37,000 troops to Somalia. When British indifference did not pressure its government, it was the UN that picked up the slack for trying to contain the untenable situation during the Serbo-Croat conflict in the early 90s.
And when horror at these errors began to be evident, global indifference stood back from Rwanda and did nothing.
What I am writing about in these posts is HUMAN rights. Not politics, not law, not theories: human beings. And in order for those who lack these rights through the tyranny of others, it is encumbent on the rest of us to be educated about the world we inhabit, and wield what power we still hold as a demographic collective for what is right, and what needs to be done.
Had the US openly confronted the warlords of Somalia, things might have been very different, but again, they left the UN to pick up the slack, and blamed the UN for failing.
If ever there has been a period of political indifference: it is here and now and it has been abounding for the last 20 years. It is still my view that which party holds power is utterly irrelevant: in Britain parties go in cycles, in America the only difference is how long it takes the administration to attack the latest non-compliant, oil-rich nation on the list once "diplomacy" has failed.
Read, my friends. Read and write for rights: the rights of those who have never had them, and the rights of the next generation, who will have their rights stolen by your government, if you do not speak up.
If you've read the first twin, you may, like me, have noted a possible root cause of the horrifying saga of violence that followed, in 4 to 6 different countries, depending on geopolitical lines.
Simply put: the UN had no business or call to be in Somalia in 1993. The food crisis presented no threat to international peace or security, only to the country itself. Now I realise that may sound incredibly harsh, given that the local warring factions were slowly starving their fellow countrymen and women to death. But in a purely logical fashion the statement is correct. The fact that the chaos in Somalia continues to this day, including an internationally unrecognised government and Somali pirates patrolling international waters, is a testament to it.
So why was the UN there? Why did the US end up there?
The UN was there because of the Security Council, having no choice in the matter. The US was there because of the American people.
As I have noted before, in my post of "Half the Sky", politicians rarely - if ever - follow morals; they follow votes. Understandably, people saw the news flash images of myriads of starving Somali people and the pressure mounted.
Here then is the true power and the true peril of politics: one way or another, both are in the hands or at the mercy of the people.
When American sentiment pressured its government, the administration sent 37,000 troops to Somalia. When British indifference did not pressure its government, it was the UN that picked up the slack for trying to contain the untenable situation during the Serbo-Croat conflict in the early 90s.
And when horror at these errors began to be evident, global indifference stood back from Rwanda and did nothing.
What I am writing about in these posts is HUMAN rights. Not politics, not law, not theories: human beings. And in order for those who lack these rights through the tyranny of others, it is encumbent on the rest of us to be educated about the world we inhabit, and wield what power we still hold as a demographic collective for what is right, and what needs to be done.
Had the US openly confronted the warlords of Somalia, things might have been very different, but again, they left the UN to pick up the slack, and blamed the UN for failing.
If ever there has been a period of political indifference: it is here and now and it has been abounding for the last 20 years. It is still my view that which party holds power is utterly irrelevant: in Britain parties go in cycles, in America the only difference is how long it takes the administration to attack the latest non-compliant, oil-rich nation on the list once "diplomacy" has failed.
Read, my friends. Read and write for rights: the rights of those who have never had them, and the rights of the next generation, who will have their rights stolen by your government, if you do not speak up.
UNderstanding the UN: The Early 90s (A Twin)
The end of the Cold War was marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later. The Crude War's birth was marked by Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent, first Gulf War.
But in the background of these two events, another kind of conflict was being born, the one that would plague the UN throughout the 90s and beyond. So far the UN had functioned as a political forum, an economic improvement forum and a peacekeeping service. But with the outbreak of civil war in Yugoslavia in 1991, an old ghost came back to haunt the world: genocide.
In 1992, the UN gained a new Secretary General: the Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who's first order of business was the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).
In January of that year, the Security Council had called on the UN to strengthen its capacity for peacekeeping operations and Boutros-Ghali responded in June with his famous Agenda for Peace. This basically elevated peacekeeping forces to act more or less as combatants to enforce cease-fires and peace agreements.
In between the two, the Security Council deemed the food crisis in Somalia a threat to international peace and security. The UN sent 500 troops to secure the aid lines. The Pakistanis arrived 5 months late, with no equipment and almost no training and the peacekeeping force as a whole found itself pinned down in the airport compound by the local warlords who used the profits from stolen foreign aid to buy arms. In December, in a final act of loyalty to the UN, the defeated George Bush sent 37,000 US troops to improve the situation; troops who were almost instantly recalled over a period of 15 months by the new Clinton administration. This was quickly picked up by the warlord, Aideed, resulting in an attack on the Pakistani troops, resulting in 26 deaths. The subsequent reprisals saw US troops killing innocent civilians and mistakenly attacking UN officials. On October 3rd, the call "Black Hawk Down" went out and the US "retreat" began in earnest, with Clinton vehemently pointing the finger at Boutros-Ghali and the UN.
The DPKO soon found itself working on sixteen different peacekeeping missions, headed from February 1993 by the man who would later head the UN as a whole: Kofi Annan. Annan's work at the DPKO included successfully completing elections in Cambodia, and the first peaceful handover of political power in the country's history. He similarly negotiated a peace agreement with UNITA in Angola, and the return of deposed President Aristide to Haiti.
But parallel to this, the slaughter of the Croatian people for their declaration of independence was well under way, with safe areas declared around four cities, manned by a paltry 7,600 man peacekeeping operation. At the same time, Milosevic (who would ultimately be tried at the Hague for crimes against humanity) found himself able to push his lines of attack and then allow the UN to "defend" them. He similarly learned that the constant threat of air strikes was nothing more than a bluff that the Security Council had never expected him to call. And once he realised his call was correct, the safety zones being slaughter zones.
As the slaughter continued in the area of Yugoslavia and Croatia, the final US troops prepared to leave Somalia in March 1994. Days later, on April 6th, the Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane was shot down, and the genocide started.
But in the background of these two events, another kind of conflict was being born, the one that would plague the UN throughout the 90s and beyond. So far the UN had functioned as a political forum, an economic improvement forum and a peacekeeping service. But with the outbreak of civil war in Yugoslavia in 1991, an old ghost came back to haunt the world: genocide.
In 1992, the UN gained a new Secretary General: the Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who's first order of business was the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).
In January of that year, the Security Council had called on the UN to strengthen its capacity for peacekeeping operations and Boutros-Ghali responded in June with his famous Agenda for Peace. This basically elevated peacekeeping forces to act more or less as combatants to enforce cease-fires and peace agreements.
In between the two, the Security Council deemed the food crisis in Somalia a threat to international peace and security. The UN sent 500 troops to secure the aid lines. The Pakistanis arrived 5 months late, with no equipment and almost no training and the peacekeeping force as a whole found itself pinned down in the airport compound by the local warlords who used the profits from stolen foreign aid to buy arms. In December, in a final act of loyalty to the UN, the defeated George Bush sent 37,000 US troops to improve the situation; troops who were almost instantly recalled over a period of 15 months by the new Clinton administration. This was quickly picked up by the warlord, Aideed, resulting in an attack on the Pakistani troops, resulting in 26 deaths. The subsequent reprisals saw US troops killing innocent civilians and mistakenly attacking UN officials. On October 3rd, the call "Black Hawk Down" went out and the US "retreat" began in earnest, with Clinton vehemently pointing the finger at Boutros-Ghali and the UN.
The DPKO soon found itself working on sixteen different peacekeeping missions, headed from February 1993 by the man who would later head the UN as a whole: Kofi Annan. Annan's work at the DPKO included successfully completing elections in Cambodia, and the first peaceful handover of political power in the country's history. He similarly negotiated a peace agreement with UNITA in Angola, and the return of deposed President Aristide to Haiti.
But parallel to this, the slaughter of the Croatian people for their declaration of independence was well under way, with safe areas declared around four cities, manned by a paltry 7,600 man peacekeeping operation. At the same time, Milosevic (who would ultimately be tried at the Hague for crimes against humanity) found himself able to push his lines of attack and then allow the UN to "defend" them. He similarly learned that the constant threat of air strikes was nothing more than a bluff that the Security Council had never expected him to call. And once he realised his call was correct, the safety zones being slaughter zones.
As the slaughter continued in the area of Yugoslavia and Croatia, the final US troops prepared to leave Somalia in March 1994. Days later, on April 6th, the Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane was shot down, and the genocide started.
UNderstanding the UN (1970-1991)
U Thant's successor was the Austrian diplomat Kurt Waldheim, who had just lost his country's presidential elections. It is the peak of amazing irony that the UN should be led, for 10 years no less, by a man who was, it was eventually learned, had not only spent longer in the army than he had admitted but was in the Hitler Youth and was apparently a Nazi War Criminal!
By this time, membership at the UN had risen from its original number to 134, the new members mostly being third world countries from Africa and Asia. As such, it is likely that the UN's swing towards economic stabilisation/normalisation was a matter of popular consent - although I still remain skeptical that the Big 5 allowed this as a gesture of good will, rather than simply avoiding trouble with potential trade partners and resource holders. This stands to reason given Taub's own admission that the UN's political forum had become little more than a public stage for ill-treated members to vent their frustrations and insult their tormentors, either past or present.
In Autumn 1975, a Third World bloc calling itself the Group of 77, made to pass a resolution condemning the state of Israel as a whole. Through US support, this resolution was quelled and replaced with one denouncing Zionism as a form of racial discrimination. This distaste for the political religious fervour that led to the installment of the Israeli state was no doubt fuelled by the actions of Black September at the 1972 olympics, and the violent reprising Mossad operations Spring of Youth and Wrath of God that followed. It is a wonder to me that despite all this political upheaval on the subject of Israel, nothing much has been done to bring peace to the Middle East in terms of tempering the actions that created it, or calling for justice for the displaced Palestinian people. I am put in mind of the Native Americans who were herded and tormented for decades before being placed on ever shrinking reservations, and are now largely consigned to memory, rather than being centre stage on the political arena in a country that was stolen from them.
Through the early and mid 80s, the UN seemed to be sinking into obscurity through its irrelevance to world concerns, especially with the fiasco at UNESCO that led to the withdrawal of the US, threatening to collapse the organisation that looked to the US for a quarter of its budget.
Then suddenly the UN was thrown back into prominence by the actions of Mikhail Gorbachev and the eventual "collapse" (all things considered I prefer the term "decommissioning") of the Soviet Union.
Since 1966, the UN had only created three peacekeeping/monitoring forces and all in the Middle East. In 1988 and 89, it created five: in Afghanistan, Angola, Namibia and Central America as well as along the Iran-Iraq border.
The final section of the first chapter of "The Best Intentions" concerns itself with the actions of George HW Bush during the first Gulf War. Reading about it now, the proximity of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait to the collapse of the Berlin Wall is staggering (August 1990 and November 1989 respectively). A conspiracy theorist could easily see the hand of the global powers looking for something, ANYTHING (in this instance the global war for oil) to replace the political instability of the Cold War. It seems to me that the global superpowers suddenly found their political strategies that had been built on fear since the 50s, with nothing now to continue supporting them, and so all but created the oil crisis, which has itself now been running for 30 years.
Taub's demarcation is interesting here: tying in the resurgence of the UN to the end of the Cold War and perhaps he is right - it seems logical that a politically powered vehicle would return to prominence with the disappearance of clear-cut political borders (i.e. since the collapse of Soviet Communism, Russia has largely adopted a free market, capitalist economy based on the American model). On the other hand, it begs the question that I have basically already raised: how did the world move so quickly from the Cold War to the Crude War? And if climate change science is to be believed/accepted, how long will it be before technology makes the oil wars redundant and it is replaced by the struggle for water.
This final point is why I loved the film Quantum of Solace: for its intelligence. While films like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol are still lamenting the end of the Cold War (much as M did in Casino Royale), Quantum of Solace looked forward to a world that would be driven by the basic human need for the most basic substance on earth. As Greene himself said in his fundraising speech: since the Second World War, 17% of our planet's vegetated surface has been irreversibly degraded.
In other words: our planet is slowly desertifying, and like all desert peoples, it won't be long before we value water more highly than gold, diamonds and oil. When that time comes, I shouldn't wonder if Brazil, with what remains of its rainforest, became the new Malibu Beach!
By this time, membership at the UN had risen from its original number to 134, the new members mostly being third world countries from Africa and Asia. As such, it is likely that the UN's swing towards economic stabilisation/normalisation was a matter of popular consent - although I still remain skeptical that the Big 5 allowed this as a gesture of good will, rather than simply avoiding trouble with potential trade partners and resource holders. This stands to reason given Taub's own admission that the UN's political forum had become little more than a public stage for ill-treated members to vent their frustrations and insult their tormentors, either past or present.
In Autumn 1975, a Third World bloc calling itself the Group of 77, made to pass a resolution condemning the state of Israel as a whole. Through US support, this resolution was quelled and replaced with one denouncing Zionism as a form of racial discrimination. This distaste for the political religious fervour that led to the installment of the Israeli state was no doubt fuelled by the actions of Black September at the 1972 olympics, and the violent reprising Mossad operations Spring of Youth and Wrath of God that followed. It is a wonder to me that despite all this political upheaval on the subject of Israel, nothing much has been done to bring peace to the Middle East in terms of tempering the actions that created it, or calling for justice for the displaced Palestinian people. I am put in mind of the Native Americans who were herded and tormented for decades before being placed on ever shrinking reservations, and are now largely consigned to memory, rather than being centre stage on the political arena in a country that was stolen from them.
Through the early and mid 80s, the UN seemed to be sinking into obscurity through its irrelevance to world concerns, especially with the fiasco at UNESCO that led to the withdrawal of the US, threatening to collapse the organisation that looked to the US for a quarter of its budget.
Then suddenly the UN was thrown back into prominence by the actions of Mikhail Gorbachev and the eventual "collapse" (all things considered I prefer the term "decommissioning") of the Soviet Union.
Since 1966, the UN had only created three peacekeeping/monitoring forces and all in the Middle East. In 1988 and 89, it created five: in Afghanistan, Angola, Namibia and Central America as well as along the Iran-Iraq border.
The final section of the first chapter of "The Best Intentions" concerns itself with the actions of George HW Bush during the first Gulf War. Reading about it now, the proximity of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait to the collapse of the Berlin Wall is staggering (August 1990 and November 1989 respectively). A conspiracy theorist could easily see the hand of the global powers looking for something, ANYTHING (in this instance the global war for oil) to replace the political instability of the Cold War. It seems to me that the global superpowers suddenly found their political strategies that had been built on fear since the 50s, with nothing now to continue supporting them, and so all but created the oil crisis, which has itself now been running for 30 years.
Taub's demarcation is interesting here: tying in the resurgence of the UN to the end of the Cold War and perhaps he is right - it seems logical that a politically powered vehicle would return to prominence with the disappearance of clear-cut political borders (i.e. since the collapse of Soviet Communism, Russia has largely adopted a free market, capitalist economy based on the American model). On the other hand, it begs the question that I have basically already raised: how did the world move so quickly from the Cold War to the Crude War? And if climate change science is to be believed/accepted, how long will it be before technology makes the oil wars redundant and it is replaced by the struggle for water.
This final point is why I loved the film Quantum of Solace: for its intelligence. While films like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol are still lamenting the end of the Cold War (much as M did in Casino Royale), Quantum of Solace looked forward to a world that would be driven by the basic human need for the most basic substance on earth. As Greene himself said in his fundraising speech: since the Second World War, 17% of our planet's vegetated surface has been irreversibly degraded.
In other words: our planet is slowly desertifying, and like all desert peoples, it won't be long before we value water more highly than gold, diamonds and oil. When that time comes, I shouldn't wonder if Brazil, with what remains of its rainforest, became the new Malibu Beach!
Monday, January 2, 2012
The Lady
Oh to have the words to transport my reader into the world of Aung San Suu Kyi the way Besson's film transported me. The story is one of highly public record so I will not attempt to avoid "spoiling" the story as I usually do.
The film is full of the bright colours of her soul, and the music is masterful of both Burmese and classical English sounds, absorbing two worlds as two sides of the same story unfold on opposite sides of the globe.
From visiting her mother's sickbed, Kyi was quickly pushed into the political arena, just as Burma's military leader "resigned" in 1988. From there, the power hungry generals that remained sought her downfall. It was interesting to me to note the words of one of her large banners, painted to adorn the walls of her home during her house arrest: power corrupts, but the fear of losing power corrupts more.
The simplicity of that phrase in explaining so many corrupt regimes is remarkable.
During her imprisonment, much of which is omitted from the film, Kyi had to endure the knowledge of her country's torment - false arrest and imprisonment, mass murder, torture, rape, and which Amnesty International still describes as one of the words human rights records in the world - , separation from her family, utter isolation. But in the end, the moment of true heartbreak to me was the loss of her most ardent supporter, her greatest friend and companion: the husband, Michael Aris, who fought her corner half a world away, dead from prostate cancer at 53, the news of which reached Kyi through the BBC World Service, access to her family having been continuously denied for the previous 3 years.
Even in the face of such loss, and with her husband's unfailing support and encouragement, Kyi refused to go back to Britain to be with her children, choosing to continue her struggle for Burma's true freedom. And as time unfolded, the loss of her husband in March 1999 was not even a halfway marker in her confinement.
I cannot even begin to attempt to fathom her strength of character to relentlessly pursue her vision in the face of such pain.
After 20 years under house arrest, Kyi was finally, fully released in November of 2010 - a fact that I lament remaining ignorant of until now through my time in Georgia, and which most people are probably ignorant of, just as many remain ignorant of the situation in Burma under military law. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, barely a year into her ordeal.
One scene in particular took my breath away: soldiers arrive at the headquarters of Kyi's movement the National League for Democracy, dispersing attendees and tearing down their bright red banner. Kyi and her colleagues are walking from the other side of the building. Ordered to stop or be fired upon, Kyi asks her colleagues to wait where they are. In a dream-like sequence, she approaches the soldiers and the rifles trained on her; she moves through their rank like a ghost, approaching their superior. A pace from his pointed pistol, she halts and closes her eyes...opening them to find the soldiers leaving.
My post script is in the form of a realisation, one that I should have had a long time ago: it is people not politics, and stories not statistics that grab peoples' hearts and bring the drive to act.
Although Kyi was protected from assassination by her status in the nation's consciousness, her strength and courage are unquestionable, and I for one feel ashamed to be living my life of quiet luxury in the face of her sacrifices and her acheivements.
As Kyi's final admonition in the form of a written post script in the film reads:
Use your liberty to promote ours.
Such a small request, such a great commission.
What then must we do?
The film is full of the bright colours of her soul, and the music is masterful of both Burmese and classical English sounds, absorbing two worlds as two sides of the same story unfold on opposite sides of the globe.
From visiting her mother's sickbed, Kyi was quickly pushed into the political arena, just as Burma's military leader "resigned" in 1988. From there, the power hungry generals that remained sought her downfall. It was interesting to me to note the words of one of her large banners, painted to adorn the walls of her home during her house arrest: power corrupts, but the fear of losing power corrupts more.
The simplicity of that phrase in explaining so many corrupt regimes is remarkable.
During her imprisonment, much of which is omitted from the film, Kyi had to endure the knowledge of her country's torment - false arrest and imprisonment, mass murder, torture, rape, and which Amnesty International still describes as one of the words human rights records in the world - , separation from her family, utter isolation. But in the end, the moment of true heartbreak to me was the loss of her most ardent supporter, her greatest friend and companion: the husband, Michael Aris, who fought her corner half a world away, dead from prostate cancer at 53, the news of which reached Kyi through the BBC World Service, access to her family having been continuously denied for the previous 3 years.
Even in the face of such loss, and with her husband's unfailing support and encouragement, Kyi refused to go back to Britain to be with her children, choosing to continue her struggle for Burma's true freedom. And as time unfolded, the loss of her husband in March 1999 was not even a halfway marker in her confinement.
I cannot even begin to attempt to fathom her strength of character to relentlessly pursue her vision in the face of such pain.
After 20 years under house arrest, Kyi was finally, fully released in November of 2010 - a fact that I lament remaining ignorant of until now through my time in Georgia, and which most people are probably ignorant of, just as many remain ignorant of the situation in Burma under military law. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, barely a year into her ordeal.
One scene in particular took my breath away: soldiers arrive at the headquarters of Kyi's movement the National League for Democracy, dispersing attendees and tearing down their bright red banner. Kyi and her colleagues are walking from the other side of the building. Ordered to stop or be fired upon, Kyi asks her colleagues to wait where they are. In a dream-like sequence, she approaches the soldiers and the rifles trained on her; she moves through their rank like a ghost, approaching their superior. A pace from his pointed pistol, she halts and closes her eyes...opening them to find the soldiers leaving.
My post script is in the form of a realisation, one that I should have had a long time ago: it is people not politics, and stories not statistics that grab peoples' hearts and bring the drive to act.
Although Kyi was protected from assassination by her status in the nation's consciousness, her strength and courage are unquestionable, and I for one feel ashamed to be living my life of quiet luxury in the face of her sacrifices and her acheivements.
As Kyi's final admonition in the form of a written post script in the film reads:
Use your liberty to promote ours.
Such a small request, such a great commission.
What then must we do?
UNderstanding the UN (1960-1970)
My reading of this section of Taub's book basically begins with a moment of incredulity: that within a couple of pages, the author refers to Ralph Bunche as estimable, and notes his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. My confusion stems from the fact that both these designations are due to Bunche's role in the international peace talks around the creation of the state of Israel. No doubt at the time this was seen as a great accomplishment in peace-making because it kept peace in the Middle East, but the overall effect of Israel's "manufacture" is astonishing. If nothing else it definitely calls into question Taub's objectivity in describing/narrating anything!
This sense of irony is deepend when we note the ultimate effect of the UN on Israel and the Middle East: having first destabilised the region through the manufacture of a Jewish state, they re-stabilised it through the efforts of Bunche (which, I admit, it is unfair to criticise with the benefit of hindsight); then they throw the region into chaos once more through the removal of the peacekeeping force mentioned in my first UN post. In and of itself this was politically biased towards Egypt/against Israel, something that the UN has since learned to avoid I believe, and no doubt catapaulted the whole region into deeper chaos in the form of the Six Days War, and the region has remained utterly unstable through the Arab-Israeli conflict ever since.
I take it as a sign, then, that the leader of the UN at this time was U Thant, the Burmese diplomat. I say "sign" primarily because of the political chaos that errupted in Thant's home country in 1962 and still continues to this day, and also because my home cinema is currently graced with Luc Besson's film "The Lady", exploring the political detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy activist and daughter of Aung San, the country's hero of independence.
Despite his relatively poor record overall, Thant was tipped as a possible successor by Hammarskjoeld himself, and was from a country neutral enough that neither the US nor USSR had objections against him. Early in his career, Thant was farsighted enough to suggest opening talks with Ho Chi Minh, but was both shouted down and privately ridiculed by the American government.
This brushing off of the UN's mediatory capacity continues to be typical of the US, and of Russia, neither of whom will allow their own actions to be dictated by anyone or anything, while expecting to be allowed to continue policing the world without question. And here we have our first avenue for considering 'exceptionalism': that political attitude whereby the rules should and must apply to all other countries but my own, because might makes right (the US traditionally being the most powerful country in the world and Russia the largest). Thus the UN played no part in the Vietnam War or the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968.
On the other hand, another peacekeeping force was accepted by both Greece and Turkey as the interim solution to the Cyprus conflict that began in 1964, and Thant himself flew to mediate (unsuccessfully as it turned out) in the India-Pakistan conflict of 1965.
It was May 1967 when Thant unilaterally withdrew the UN peacekeeping force from Suez at Egyptian Prime Minister Nasser's simple request, and Israel launched their Six Day War the following month.
It was at this time, as might be guessed, that the UN's involvement in political matters quickly died down, and was replaced by their appearance on the world economic stage, dealing with issues like hunger, poverty, health and so on, through a myriad of new bodies. The World Health Organisation's famous 1966 pledge to eradicate smallpox within a decade ultimately took 11 years but was successful nonetheless.
The point from this entry is that even from some of its earliest days and earliest undertakings, the power of the UN has been thoroughly undermined by the god complex of the country that created, as well as the countries that control it. Of course it would be no surprise to those involved in the UN at any point that being under the thumb of any member nation negates the purpose of the UN, but that very fact precludes any action to change it: none of the Big 5 (as they are now) is ever going to vote in favour of removing their own powers of veto because it's against their own interests. As such, there's a certain sense of doom about the UN, and any hope for it to flourish lies in the generic sphere of global welfare, not in the minefield of politics.
This sense of irony is deepend when we note the ultimate effect of the UN on Israel and the Middle East: having first destabilised the region through the manufacture of a Jewish state, they re-stabilised it through the efforts of Bunche (which, I admit, it is unfair to criticise with the benefit of hindsight); then they throw the region into chaos once more through the removal of the peacekeeping force mentioned in my first UN post. In and of itself this was politically biased towards Egypt/against Israel, something that the UN has since learned to avoid I believe, and no doubt catapaulted the whole region into deeper chaos in the form of the Six Days War, and the region has remained utterly unstable through the Arab-Israeli conflict ever since.
I take it as a sign, then, that the leader of the UN at this time was U Thant, the Burmese diplomat. I say "sign" primarily because of the political chaos that errupted in Thant's home country in 1962 and still continues to this day, and also because my home cinema is currently graced with Luc Besson's film "The Lady", exploring the political detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy activist and daughter of Aung San, the country's hero of independence.
Despite his relatively poor record overall, Thant was tipped as a possible successor by Hammarskjoeld himself, and was from a country neutral enough that neither the US nor USSR had objections against him. Early in his career, Thant was farsighted enough to suggest opening talks with Ho Chi Minh, but was both shouted down and privately ridiculed by the American government.
This brushing off of the UN's mediatory capacity continues to be typical of the US, and of Russia, neither of whom will allow their own actions to be dictated by anyone or anything, while expecting to be allowed to continue policing the world without question. And here we have our first avenue for considering 'exceptionalism': that political attitude whereby the rules should and must apply to all other countries but my own, because might makes right (the US traditionally being the most powerful country in the world and Russia the largest). Thus the UN played no part in the Vietnam War or the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968.
On the other hand, another peacekeeping force was accepted by both Greece and Turkey as the interim solution to the Cyprus conflict that began in 1964, and Thant himself flew to mediate (unsuccessfully as it turned out) in the India-Pakistan conflict of 1965.
It was May 1967 when Thant unilaterally withdrew the UN peacekeeping force from Suez at Egyptian Prime Minister Nasser's simple request, and Israel launched their Six Day War the following month.
It was at this time, as might be guessed, that the UN's involvement in political matters quickly died down, and was replaced by their appearance on the world economic stage, dealing with issues like hunger, poverty, health and so on, through a myriad of new bodies. The World Health Organisation's famous 1966 pledge to eradicate smallpox within a decade ultimately took 11 years but was successful nonetheless.
The point from this entry is that even from some of its earliest days and earliest undertakings, the power of the UN has been thoroughly undermined by the god complex of the country that created, as well as the countries that control it. Of course it would be no surprise to those involved in the UN at any point that being under the thumb of any member nation negates the purpose of the UN, but that very fact precludes any action to change it: none of the Big 5 (as they are now) is ever going to vote in favour of removing their own powers of veto because it's against their own interests. As such, there's a certain sense of doom about the UN, and any hope for it to flourish lies in the generic sphere of global welfare, not in the minefield of politics.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Hugo
So, this morning, I finally got to see Martin Scorcese's latest film, Hugo.
As usual I will try to avoid giving away too much of the plot but suffice it to say that despite my initial skepticism, I am now a believer in the genius of this film. It is a beautifully crafted tribute to two aspects of humanity that I greatly admire: the ability to heal ourselves AND others; and then the often heartachingly beautiful power of memories from our own lives, and viewing in retrospect the great acheivements of others, especially when they are believed to be lost.
Given the silent nature of some of the films within the film, it was an added bonus to behold the silent beauty of The Artist, the forthcoming black and white film from director Michel Hazanavicius. Even the trailer is a work of art, and the hugely retro black and white screen is added to by a dance ability that one might have been forgiven for thinking obsolete and forgotten. Watching it I felt a kinship to the director and his obvious love of old movies. The lack of dialogue is something that is much underrated. I have a short film from my cousin, a movie producer in Bollywood, and while it is only a few minutes long, it is a wonderous portrayal of reconciliation in a relationship, the more powerful because it is silent.
I urge everyone to see Hugo and to wonder about the gift that The Artist will doubtless be to a world too full of noise and mediocrity.
As usual I will try to avoid giving away too much of the plot but suffice it to say that despite my initial skepticism, I am now a believer in the genius of this film. It is a beautifully crafted tribute to two aspects of humanity that I greatly admire: the ability to heal ourselves AND others; and then the often heartachingly beautiful power of memories from our own lives, and viewing in retrospect the great acheivements of others, especially when they are believed to be lost.
Given the silent nature of some of the films within the film, it was an added bonus to behold the silent beauty of The Artist, the forthcoming black and white film from director Michel Hazanavicius. Even the trailer is a work of art, and the hugely retro black and white screen is added to by a dance ability that one might have been forgiven for thinking obsolete and forgotten. Watching it I felt a kinship to the director and his obvious love of old movies. The lack of dialogue is something that is much underrated. I have a short film from my cousin, a movie producer in Bollywood, and while it is only a few minutes long, it is a wonderous portrayal of reconciliation in a relationship, the more powerful because it is silent.
I urge everyone to see Hugo and to wonder about the gift that The Artist will doubtless be to a world too full of noise and mediocrity.
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