We could see the smoke from the bombs on the satellite map Web site, Google Earth. Refugees were fleeing along the road from Beirut to Damascus. One of those refugees was our dear friend and colleague Elise Salem, who was visiting her native land of Lebanon when war broke out in July.
The recent conflict in Lebanon claimed more than 1,000 lives, caused billions of dollars in damages and threatened to violently destabilize the entire region. And then came U.N. Resolution 1701...
The following dialog takes place between a claimed supporter of the UN vision who believes the UN has failed and needs to be scrapped, and the executive director of the SWCT chapter. "...the United Nations appears to have become a failed organization, as exemplified by its failure to act in time to save at least many hundreds of thousands of lives in the genocides of Rwanda and Darfur, and by its most recent failures in achieving reasonable reform in regard to administrative and human rights structures..."
The Global Challenge Suppose the all nations agreed to educate children, provide clean water and sanitation, fight disease, reduce maternal mortality and promote gender equality, eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, and do this while promoting sustainability and reversing the loss of environmental resources? Sound utopian? Not only did all 189 members of the United Nations agree to this agenda, but...
The government appears poised for a showdown with at least 180 member states of the United Nations over the structure of a proposed new Human Rights Council. The rejection last week by the US of the draft resolution establishing the new council risks delaying for a long time the work of the proposed council, unraveling broad agreement among nations and leaving no alternative to the discredited Human Rights Commission.
President Bush first nominated Bolton over a year ago and the Senate refused to confirm him. At that time fifty-nine former high-level American diplomats, appointed by ten different presidents, issued an open letter stating: ---"he is the wrong man for this position at a time when the U.N. is entering a critically important phase of modernization, seeking to promote economic development and democratic reforms and searching for ways to cope better with proliferation crises and a spurt of natural disasters and internal conflicts."
In his hard-hitting essay, Cameron Tepfer, a senior at Ridgefield High School, pushes historical and political imperatives in urging President Bush to use US influence to make positive Security Council reforms.
Aerim Kim is an 11th grader from Greenwich High School, and here makes an impassioned plea for reform to the UNHCHR as a way to improve both its internal mission credibility and public perception.
U.S. Rendition Policy - Is Condi Channeling Keitel or Condor? - Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (IPS) - According to his memoirs, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel considered the secret abduction and rendition to Germany of suspected Resistance members -- otherwise known as the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) Decree -- to be the worst of all of the orders issued by Adolf Hitler for the western occupied territories of the Third Reich during World War II.
Hard Evidence of US Torturing Prisoners to Death Ignored by Corporate Media, by Peter Phillips
Military autopsy reports provide indisputable proof that detainees are being tortured to death while in US military custody. Yet the US corporate media are covering it with the seriousness of a garage sale for the local Baptist Church.
Notes from the UN DPI/NGO BRIEFING November 17, 2005, on The UN Secretary-General's Study on Violence against Children. This study, commissioned by the GA in 2005, involves over 100 countries. Its goal is to raise awareness of all forms of violence against children, to better understand the causes, and to evaluate mechanisms already in place to report violence and make recommendations.
Notes from the UN DPI/NGO BRIEFING, November 10, 2005 on Women, Peace and Security: Participation, Protection and Prevention, focusing on the role of women in peace and security and advancements in gender-based perspectives since the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325:
UNITED NATIONS byline Stephen Schlesinger - 1 December 2005 / www.MaximsNews.com/ The United Nations’ longest-running saga, the oil-for-food imbroglio, reached a critical point last month when Paul Volcker issued his final report on the tawdry episode. His findings will now presumably lead to the prosecutions of the various corporations and individuals involved. All of this is to the good. But, meantime, what about the collateral damage done to the key figure in this investigation, namely, UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan?
This is an opinion piece written by former President Jimmy Carter. It appeared in the LA Times on Nov. 17, 2005. It is a must read for all Americans. His newest book is "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis," published this month by Simon & Schuster.
Issues 
