Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
HOW MITT ROMNEY DODGED THE DRAFT — H. Bruce Franklin remembers Romney from his Stanford days and lays out exactly how he and his father ensured he would evade service in the war which, at Stanford, he was demonstrating for. Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures. Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth.
Archives by Tag 'UN'
On March 21, 2012, the fifteen-member UN Security Council voted unanimously, for the first time, to push the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, towards a diplomatic settlement, by ordering it to comply with the Six Point plan presented by Kofi Anan, the former UN Secretary...
The year-long effort to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad and his government has failed. Two or three months ago, it seemed to come close to succeeding, as insurgents took over enclaves in cities such as Homs and Deir el-Zour. There was talk of no-fly zones and foreign ...
The failure of a mission by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to get Iranian permission to visit a military testing site mentioned in its latest report has been interpreted in media coverage as a stall to avoid the discovery of confirming evidence of past work...
Dear President Abbas,
There was visible and audible euphoria at the UN General Assembly in September when you announced Palestine’s appl...
Haiti, a close neighbor of the US with over nine million people, was devastated by earthquake on January 12, 2010. Hundreds of thousands were killed and many more wounded.
The UN estimated international donors gave Haiti over $1.6 billion in relief aid since the ...
“Donors and aid organizations prefer to be the boss of their own money. And they want to be in charge of how to spend it, where to spend it, and if to spend it at all,” Linda Polman, author of ...
Geneva.
An air of busyness fills the conference chamber of the United Nations in Geneva. Arabic dances past French on the escalators, as delegates from the UN Missions and from accredited NGOs go from meeting room to meeting room, with an occasional stop a...
The possibility that the Palestinian issue could imperil an Australian Prime Minister’s hold on office would seem remote to many outsiders, but the UNESCO vote for Palestine has a resonance in Australia.
There was widespread criticism in many circles in Austr...
To better understand the Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations, it is important to understand the original 1947 UN action on Israel-Palestine.
The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the UN created Israel, that the world was in favor of...
Port-au-Prince.
Broken and collapsed buildings remain in every neighborhood. Men pull oxcarts by hand through the street. Women carry 5 gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street. Hundreds of thousands remain ...
Amid the enthusiastic applause in New York and the celebrations in Ramallah, it was easy to believe — if only a for minute — that, after decades of obstruction by Israel and the United States, a Palestinian state might finally be pulled out of the United Nati...
Did you catch Obama’s populist twitch? The moment when he tossed aside the stifling cloak of compromise, and like Joshua before the walls of Jericho issued the trumpet call to the disheartened Democratic base that henceforth it will be the battlements guarding the untax...
Today, September 23, Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas submits, to the UN the application for Palestinian statehood for the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967.
What are the implications of this effort? Does it serve the Palestinian ...
Here in the Realm of Cross Purposes, I sat on D’s balcony in what he calls a cheap chair. But it’s the anti-gravity adjustable recliner and it does everything but what should be consensual. My hands worked the arms, forcing it forward, then back. I told him I coul...
It has been a frustrating month living on the ground in Palestine, while you hear the whole world talk about your location. Something strange has happened lately and all of sudden all eyes are on Palestine. I am not sure if is good or bad, because when we say Pales...
It’s the show that time and the world forgot. It’s called the Occupation and it’s now in its 45th year. Playing on a landscape about the size of Delaware, it remains largely hidden from view, while Middle Eastern headlines from elsewhere seize the day. Diploma...
Autumn in the Middle East hasn’t the melancholy connotations you attach to it in the West. For you, this is the season of dying; leaves change color and fall and birds fly south. For us, this is the jolly season of awakening after stupefying summer heat; grass hatches a...
US President Barack Obama’s decision to use the US’ veto prerogative if the United Nations votes to recognise a Palestinian state will constitute a blow to those seeking peace in the Middle East.
His administration’s claim that peace can only be a...
For those who think that anything good is going to come out of this NATO led war in Libya, and feel that it is a mainly a question of some wrongly supporting Gadaffi, I beg to differ. The choices really are-
1. A government in power under Gadaffi; or...
Almost all the factual findings, as well as the legal analysis and conclusions of the recently leaked UN Secretary General’s Panel of Inquiry into the “Flotilla Incident” on May 31, 2010 (Palmer/Uribe Panel) directly contradict those of an earlier UN report of the H...
Unless the Obama administration succeeds in making Mahmoud Abbas an offer he can’t refuse – or even if it does, but events spin out of control – the UN General Assembly will soon vote to accord UN membership to a soon-to-be-declared state of Palestine. Because th...
“Nobody cares about Somalia, even if we die in our millions” Abdirahman Ali, a Somali 29-year old father of two, bemoaned in despair as he witnessed the death and suffering of his people.
Drought, famine, starvation, disease and war have been the unrelenting sc...
The recently released, and long awaited, Wikileaks Files on Ethiopia expose the lies used to justify UN inSecurity Council Sanctions in force against the little Horn of African country Eritrea.
It has been over four years since the USA and it’s vassals at the UN ...
The video is profoundly disturbing. It shows four men, identified as Uruguayan troops from the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), apparently raping an 18-year old Haitian youth. Two of them have the victim pinned down on a mattress, with his hands twisted high up his bac...
In the 15 November 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence that was approved by the PNC representing all Palestinians all over the world, the Executive Committee of the PLO was set up as the Provisional Government for the State of Palestine—pursuant to my advice....