The Prosecution of Bradley Manning
In a June 11 post on TomDispatch ,
human-rights lawyer Chase Madar takes on the "dystopian secrecy" of the
post 9/11 era in the government's prosecution of Bradley Manning. Manning, the Wikileaks source within the US Army, potentially faces
decades of jail time if convicted. Speaking of the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars, Madar writes: "Both wars of occupation were
ghastly strategic choices that have killed hundreds of thousands,
wounded many more, sent millions into exile, and destabilized what
Washington, in good times, used to call 'the arc of instability.'
Why have our strategic choices been so disastrous? In large part
because they have been militantly clueless. Starved of important
information, both the media and public opinion were putty in the
hands [of] the Bush administration and its neocon followers as they
dreamt up and then put into action their geopolitical fantasies."
Transparency in foreign relations is a good thing, argues Madar, and
"what gets people killed, no matter how much our pols and
pundits strain to deny it, aren’t InfoSec breaches or media leaks,
but foolish and clueless strategic choices." Madar contrasts the military's flexibility on rape and
sexual assault and on the killing of foreign civilians with the
strictness that they use in dealing with declassifying so-called
classified information. He concludes that "the young private’s
act of civil defiance was in fact a first step in reversing the
pathologies that have made our foreign policy a string of
self-inflicted homicidal disasters."
US - China Cooperation
US - China Cooperation
On June 13, Xinhuanet reported on
comments from a senior Chinese lawmaker on the recently concluded
meeting between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Referring to the historic summit as an important moment for China and
the United States, Fu Ying, chairperson of the Foreign Affairs
Committee of the 12th National People's Congress, spoke to the
Washington-based think tank Brookings Institute. "One of the
most important messages coming out of this summit is their commitment
to working together to build a new model of relationship for the two
countries to head for partnership, not for conflict as some had
feared," she said. "We hope it will lead to many years of
working together with excellent results coming on the way." The
Xinhuanet article concludes: "During the summit at Annenberg
estate, both Xi and Obama reaffirmed their commitment to seeking to
build a new type of great-power relationship that features win-win
cooperation based on mutual respect and benefit, so as to avoid the
repetition of the zero-sum game usually seen in history between a
resident power and an emerging one."
Millennium Development Goals
In a supplement to its June issue, Le Monde Diplomatique reported on the mixed results towards reaching the
Millennium Development Goals adopted by the UN General Assembly in
2000. The eight goals to be achieved by 2015 are "to (i)
eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, (ii) achieve universal primary
education, (iii) promote gender equality and empower women, (iv)
reduce child mortality, (v) improve maternal health, (vi) combat
HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, (vii) ensure environmental
sustainability and (viii) develop a global partnership for
development." The intent is to reach specific targets by
following an action plan and measuring progress. Progress towards
the goals is measured relative to 1990. The article by Philippe
Rekacewicz notes that "India and China have made considerable
headway [towards reaching the goals], while sub-Saharan Africa has
stagnated or regressed."
Rekacewicz then reviews the three
health goals in some detail. Goal 4 is "to reduce child
mortality by two thirds. According to figures published by the UN
Development Programme (UNDP), it fell by a third between 1990 and
2010, which is not fast enough....Only around 10 out of the 70
countries concerned are likely to achieve the two-thirds reduction by
2015. " Goal 5 (maternal health - reducing maternal mortality
by 75%) has shown very slow progress: "In 2010 some 287,000
women died in childbirth (85% of them in sub-Saharan Africa and
southern Asia), compared with 550,000 in 1990." Goal 6 ("combat
HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases") has three separate
targets:
- Check the spread of HIV/AIDS. The rate of increase has slowed but as of 2010 the number of people living with the virus was still rising.
- Provide access to antiretroviral treatments to all who need them by 2010. In 2010 6.5 million people received treatment compared to a worldwide total of over 30 million. But, Rekacewicz notes, "On the positive side, since 2005 the wider availability of treatment has significantly reduced mortality."
- Combat the great endemic diseases, such as malaria and tuberculosis. Progress is being made on malaria - "World Health Organisation (WHO) figures show that the number of declared cases of malaria fell by 50% between 2000 and 2010 in 40 of the 100 countries where the disease is found." But the long-range outlook for malaria is somewhat pessimistic due to a lack of sufficient funding and "the emergence of drug-resistant strains in a growing number of Southeast Asian and sub-Saharan African countries". On a more confident note, the spread of tuberculosis "could be halted by 2015, in line with the development goal."
With less than three years to go before
the 2015 deadline, many of the targets will not be achieved. The UN
is trying to launch "accelerated action programmes" but,
the article concludes, "if the institutions and states which
pledged special contributions do not keep their promises, these
efforts will come to nothing."
No comments:
Post a Comment