The Winstonite

Transnational law has to take into account the inter-layered components of national, customary, international and human rights laws. Its definition is almost as broad as the processes and branches of law that make up its totality. Laws, as we know, permeate into all levels of life and interact with all global citizens in some way, shape or form at some point in our lives. Everything from conduct, relationships, identity, conflict and the ensuing processes have been regulated by one law or another. Further, all laws operate within and through a complex weave of domestic and international law systems. This, in essence, reflects the sphere of transnational law.

This is particularly true for Muslim women, who have been largely misrepresented in the international sphere. These misrepresentations are largely due to what theorist Edward Said terms the Orientalist perspective. This perspective creates an us/them dichotomy between the West and the East. This dichotomy stigmatizes largely Muslim Populations, creates restrictions and boundaries for Muslim nations on a global scale, and impedes full participation in international processes. The invasion of Iraq under the Bush government’s “War on Terror” is a prime example, as it was disguised under the premise of “liberating” its oppressed women. The continued rationale for Canadian forces suppressing the insurgency in Afghanistan is ”What Happens if we leave Afghanistan”

Whether accepted or not, Islam will continue to have a greater transnational influence on domestic and international law processes. This is echoed in the pure statistics that there are over 1.2 billion Muslims world-wide, over 20% of the global population.

Indeed, western perceptions and misperceptions have such an influence in the international sphere that colonized nations are constantly attempting to adapt domestic legislation to the Imperial lens. For example, currently, at least 12 nation-states including Germany, Turkey and Libya have already, or are drafting, legislation that would restrict expression of religious belief through dress (hijab). (editors’ note: Turkey has a history of this sort of legislation dating back to Ataturk, but when Ataturk banned the headscarf and the fes it was for more noble reasons than Germany today.) Such ideas marginalize Muslim women, as enshrined in the broader womens’ movements, thereby maintaining the “Otherness” of the Muslim woman as the, “Exotic Female Other.” This only serves to aid the colonizer in further subjugating people based upon distinctions of race, class and gender.

While only slowly emerging, feminist responses to human rights (or lack of) must address conceptions and the problematic affects of cultural imperialism. Feminist criticism of the Imperial lens highlights how international policy makers tend to exclude women’s voices. This focus of Islamic relations on a global scale has reached epic proportions since the events of 9/11, the response to which narrowly defined and dichotomized Islam as a violent, aggressive religion. Edward Said goes on to further explain how such dichotomizing allows for the Imperial lens to ultimately define and control the East and demonize Islam. In accordance, there is the West and the East, or Orientals; one is dominant and the other dominated, this entails having their internal affairs controlled and their treasure (culture) to be at the disposal of the West.

With the introduction of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came the treaty titled, the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) effective as of 1981. This treaty was ultimately created as a way to create more awareness of women’s issues and acknowledge that women were being largely excluded from international law processes. Equally endemic was the reformist movement that posed challenges to the Convention. These legal and cultural transformations, while once seen as natural or a product of biology, were subverted and came to be understood as socially constructed.

This freedom to create one’s own definition and experiences, as Said
states, is the Westerner’s privilege as his represents the stronger of the two cultures. In terms of Muslim women, this constitutes her always and already as both the victim and the ‘exotified’ object of desire. In a transnational sphere, the women are thus defined by dominant ideology and represented as such. This discourse is most revealing of this “positional superiority” that uses such definitions to limit the representation of Muslim women to discussions of veiling, honour and shame, arranged marriages and Islam.

However, this poses many challenges for the East or Muslim nations who are represented as a static culture rather than a unit that is dynamically created by everyone who takes part in it. The gendered relationship comes into play as women’s bodies tend to represent “boundary markers of the nation.” While this is arguably true of all nations, this is even more important in regards to Muslim women, whose bodies (and modes of dress) directly come under cross-examination in the realm of international human rights.

Feminist anti-essentialists are concerned with the interplay of the self and the role of culture on the self. This particular theory sees the sex/gender binary (that is; the difference between men and women) as primarily a product of culture rather than strict biology. In this way, they may use such knowledge to identify key areas of power and control for women in a global context. This need for power/control cannot be truer for Muslim women who are firstly dominated by a patriarchal system of law in their own country then further victimized by the transnational processes that define and represent them as oppressed persons in need of Western intervention. This lack of presence is only exacerbated when race, class and gender are woven into the interlocking layers of oppression.

Muslim women are misrepresented by their assumed oppression and victim status on an international scale. The Western feminist discourse tends to perpetuate this us/them binary instead of critiquing it, and thus Muslim women lose their voice here as well, where it should ring loudly.
Not only do we need to recognize that women globally are actively involved in their own resistance movements, but we also need to critique and challenge this assumption of superiority by Western ideologies around human rights and feminist movements. Also, there tends to be a lack of recognition of womens’ unequal representation in domestic, international or transnational law decision-making. In this way, more attention might be given to other areas of women’s issues so that women are not just represented but present themselves in the transnational sphere.

Lebanon’s unity government has collapsed after the Hezbollah movement and its political allies resigned from the cabinet over arguments stemming from a UN probe into the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, in 2005.

There has been growing political tension in Lebanon, amid signs that Hezbollah members could be indicted by the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

Ten ministers tendered their resignations on Wednesday after reports that al-Hariri’s son Saad, the prime minister, had refused their call to convene a cabinet meeting to discuss the investigation by the STL.

Read More:http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011112151356430829.html

by Ellie Fox, American Correspondent

It has recently come to my attention that there was an active lobby to have obesity included in the newest round of the Millennium Development Goals, and that when it was not advocates felt that a great disservice was being done to the victims of the growing obesity epidemic. The first goal of the Millennium Development Goals is to end poverty and hunger. By diverting attention from this critical issue to reducing obesity, which is an individually controllable condition, is not only a waste of resources but also feels like a slap in the face to the millions of individuals who face starvation every day. Obesity is not something that the MDG should be spending time on.

While it has been considered a disease by WHO as of 1998, in almost all cases obesity is entirely preventable by diet and exercise. These same preventative measures would also protect against many of the maladies associated with obesity such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. By declaring obesity to be a Millennium Development Goal, attention and resources may be taken away from more important and critical health issues such as increased vaccination coverage, reduction in childhood malnutrition, increased access to clean water, and distribution of mosquito nets to curb the devastating spread of malaria. With such critical health issues already on the table, it seems absurd to me that we would even consider making obesity a global health priority. In my opinion, obesity, unless caused as a side effect from other health issues such as thyroid malfunction, is a behavioral phenomenon and should be treated as such. While some individuals have a predisposition to being relatively larger, morbid obesity can and should be addressed through social interventions such as teaching people to eat right, promoting healthy activity levels, and perhaps legislating to reduce the amount of empty unhealthy calories which are available for individuals to consume.

If this were to be made a MDG, policy would have to change in that the goals would have to be re-evaluated. Instead of working towards preventing the spread of communicable diseases and improving nutrition for children, they would have to focus more on social prevention campaigns for peoples’ behaviors and lifestyle choices. Better education about the importance of exercising and eating right is important, but I believe that should be done on a local or national level at the most, and not incorporated in to the MDGs where it may take attention away from more life-threatening issues and divert funds from the developing world where they are most needed to the developed world for individuals who have less than optimal health due to their own poor choices.

As I established in the first part of this series, in international organisations the deficiencies of decision-making structures and their disappointing results are mostly connected with problems of representation, participation, and accountability. In this context, questionable procedures of representation and participation end up accounting for what seem to be two recurring trends: swinging between endless political deliberations and “ad hoc” decisions behind closed doors by small committees and policies possibly swayed by ulterior motives; and erratic realisation of decisions. In other words, the weakening of legitimacy arising from the lack of convergence and consistency is itself largely the product of the flaws in participation and decision-making mechanisms. One of the most visible elements causing such flaws is the clientelistic approach of sovereign states.

International organisations are given essential support and assistance from member states aligned with their multilateral mission. There are, for instance, countries committed to multilateralism on a structural basis, as shown by the cases of the Nordic countries and Canada. Major democratic powers are also endorsing multilateral imperatives to a certain extent; otherwise, no progress would have been made in multilateral matters in the past few decades since the fall of the Soviet Union. But by and large, international organisations with generalist mandates have not been able to establish a strong constituency dedicated first and foremost to the unique dimensions of their task. Rather, they have mainly found clients to support their own interests. Consider how much bickering takes place over how to allocate even medium-ranking positions within the UN. This is just one of many mundane examples of clientelism in these institutions.

Another crucial example is the effect of the various modes of organisational membership. The discriminatory veto powers have made the IMF, the World Bank, and the United Nations Security Council a nearly wholly-operated territory of the most developed and powerful nations, one that all too often caters primarily to their needs and interests. On the other hand, the one seat–one voice policy has allowed the General Assembly to become one of the preferred forums and instruments of the developing countries. In the process, it is the inclusive and universal qualities of their message that are likely to disappear, making the UN more a tool for powerful nations than a platform for world issues.

Instead of universalizing particular interests, the clientelist tendency of states contributes to the particularisation of universal interests. In undermining the claim to universalism of generalist international organisations, this inclination undermines a crucial piece of their legitimacy. Moreover, this kind of malfunction is somewhat expected to engender further normative, political, and institutional disenchantment and unravelling. It is difficult to reverse since it has a penchant for feeding on itself. A client, by definition, is not really concerned with integration and inclusiveness, with possible benefits attached to long-term investments involving the commitment to public good. Rather, its prime objective tends to be the fulfilment of its exclusive and immediate interests.

Clientelistic state behaviour stems to a certain extent from the powerlessness of international organisations to transmit and secure trust and reliability in their power to deliver the public goods that they are mandated to deliver, to give enough insurance to buy patience and borrow time. Facing uncertainty in long-term strategy, it only makes sense to go for a client status and focus on the search for short-term gain. With the intention of reversing this breakdown, international organisations may sometimes look for additional cooperation, which can in theory be used as leverage in pursuing their mandate. This, however, has also the potential of starting clientelist demands growing again. New supporters exact their price while old clients raise the stakes. As a result, most of the time the recovery attempt entrenches more than ever the particularisation and segmentation of interests and increases the difficulty of breaking this vicious cycle. An organisation that fits the views and interests of developed countries is likely to be seen positively by them, and runs the risk of being badly rated and perceived as a foe by developing countries, and vice versa. Adversarial understandings of this sort based on segmented vested interests can never transmit confidence, considering that the more an organisation is associated with initiatives perceived as favouring one group over another, the more the legitimacy of its policies is under stress, and the more its legitimacy as an institution is questioned and weakened.

The custom-designed aspects of international organisations are not peculiar to them. States and national governments themselves face the challenge of having to homogenize particular interests. Even when functioning properly, (for example when integrated and producing public goods reasonably well) they never succeed completely in this enterprise. Their decisions and actions are seldom able to generate fully fledged consent. In this sense, they too are bound by clients and detractors in their national realm. However, due to the imitative status of international organisations vis-à-vis states, the tendency to custom-tailor policies to client interests becomes one of the main hindrances to their legitimacy. Instead of placing multilateral qualities at their core, on which their legitimacy primarily depends, this tendency leaves such qualities at their periphery, hence giving way to the low level of multilateral institutionalisation of international organisations. The lack of proportionality between international organisations’ charters and the means at their disposal to accomplish the mandates and goals specified in these charters provides a good illustration of the low level of institutionalisation.

Of course, charters and the mandates and objectives they dictate have rhetorical, and normative mission-establishing functions that go beyond any plans that they should ever be entirely realised. This is especially true for the wide mandate of international organisations such as the United Nations (global security and prosperity) and the World Bank (eradication of poverty), much as it is for those delineated by the constitutions, declarations of rights, and principles on which most modern nations are based. Moreover, the mandate of an international organisation does not necessarily imply that it falls exclusively to that organisation to achieve the designated goals. Their implementation is part of a systematic effort in which states, developed and developing countries, corporations, and individuals have a role to play. Considering this role, some argue that the responsibility of international organisations is mainly to occupy the interstices between the contributions of these other actors. Others hold that the disparity between the budgets allocated to international organisations and the need to rationalise costs speaks in favour of a more balanced view on the institutionalisation of international organisations.

Regardless of the plausibility of these arguments, it remains the fact that if the charters and mandates of international institutions are really going to be taken sincerely, the means provided to accomplish them need to be adequate, even if in a modestly realistic way. There is a limit under which the lack of resources prevents any attempt from being successful. In the end, the low level of institutionalisation that characterises international organisations is demonstrated in the fact that, rather than being global institutions with a globally effectual operational reach, they lean towards being headquarters organisations. In this context, the head is likely to be remote from the rest of the organisation and its activities on the ground.

At times, the two barely identify each other as parts of the same entity. As internal deficiencies usually result in meagre power projection, this condition largely accounts for the poor cohesion of decision-making processes and inconsistent carrying out of operations in the field. As a consequence, what international institutions have built so far “… is less a thick multidirectional web or matrix than a thin network with a relatively meagre normative, operational, and political grip on or “pull power” over developed and developing countries.”

Do member states, the most powerful ones in particular, feel duty-bound to take on missions internationally to satisfy a sense of solidarity and responsibility beyond their borders, while never really expecting or seeking significant, actual results or improvements? One wonders if the apparent shortage of resources might be rooted in the many conditions that states put on any political commitment to multilateral initiatives. If this is one accepts that this might be the case, then perhaps the somewhat low level of institutionalisation of international organisations, and of the international integration and socialisation that go with institutionalisation, can be explained in connection with the availability of various essential material sources and forms of legitimacy that occupy the international system and the dilemmas of action they create.

Then, it could be said that while the difficulties in transcendence within the decision making processes of international organizations constitutes the main reason, it is also often the case they are not given the appropriate legal means and most importantly the resources to carry out their missions. In many cases the United Nations is told to keep the peace, but its soldiers are not allowed to fire their weapons, instead physically standing between two opposing sides. What should UN peacekeepers do when civil war breaks out? The International Monetary Fund is asked to solve financial crises but is not given powers to regulate borrowers before such crises break out and also not given sufficient resources to play the role of lender of last resort once they do. What should the IMF do to prevent financial crises in the first place? While national governments can tax and/or compel their citizens to generate the resources required to provide public goods, international organisations obviously lack such mechanisms that are essential to accomplishing this task. As a result, their resources will often be inadequate.

By their nature, the key feature of international public goods (or bads) is that benefits (or costs) are not limited to a single nation or only to a group of nations. In this sense, the efficient provision of public goods requires that the marginal cost of their production should equal the sum of the marginal benefits to all those that consume them. While in principle, the shares in the costs of providing a public good should reflect individual demands for them, there are problems in having nations who are consumers of international public goods actually reveal and pay for their true demands.

If exclusion is difficult or impossible, net-consumer nations will have an incentive to understate their needs in order to free-ride. In a domestic context, these problems are tackled in democratic societies by having voters choose representatives whose tax and spending preferences match their own. Since the state has the ability to enforce its decisions, consumers have an incentive to reveal their preferences more openly. But in an international setting, when such enforcement is not possible, efficient provision is particularly problematic. To be sure, as the existence of international organisations and agreements attests, these problems do not mean that a semi-working cooperation will be completely unattainable (since there are a variety of mechanisms states can possibly use to persuade others to comply using petty game-theory induced strategies) but rather implies that cooperation and resources for public goods are likely to be less than preferable.

Granting organisations more power and resources obviously makes it more likely that they will be able to carry out its mission. Indeed, as was noted above paragraphs, nation states can in principle use democratic mechanisms like voting and the ability to raise resources through taxation to supply national public goods in appropriate amounts. But the closer international organisations come to acting like nation states, the more likely that their legitimacy will be questioned. Inevitably, this semi-supranational body built on the mechanisms of the nation state will be imperfect and vulnerable to criticism and thus the more powerful international organisations become the more opposition they will generate. This is why international organisations are vulnerable to charges that they lack legitimacy; the standards for legitimate governance are generally set by those of the nation state. Global governance is inevitably likely to be less democratic and thus less ‘legitimate’ than governance within a nation-state. In particular, international organisations derive their legitimacy in part from the notion that their members, national governments, accurately reflect the interests of the people they represent. But this notion can be questioned either when there are other international non-governmental actors with claims to represent certain interests or when national governments are seen as insufficiently representative, or insufficiently informed and competent. In addition, international organisations are often set up to focus on a single purpose such as health, or trade or finance. This focus is particularly vulnerable to accusations that other factors are not being given sufficient weight.
As long as missions remain fairly limited and international organisations are restricted in their means, these potential problems may not be of great consequence. But the more ambitious the goals and the more aggressive the means, the more vulnerable they will be to attacks on these democratic deficits. The problem is also less likely to adversely affect results as long as the international organisation participates in activities that are generally regarded to be ‘win-win’, providing benefits to all parties involved. But they are more likely to come to the forefront when issues are widely perceived as having major distributional implications among the members. This, then, is another dilemma facing global organisations: “If missions are expanded, and organizations given insufficient means, they are likely to fail (or fall short of optimal behaviour) and be criticized for ineffectiveness. However, the more extensive the means they are given, the more likely that their legitimacy will be questioned.” Similar to the relation between legitimacy and efficacy of decision making processes, the relation between material capabilities and legitimacy also seems to be negative in the context of international organizations.

Under the current conditions, the concept of legitimacy and existential requirements of international organizations appear to be at odds with one another. This is mainly due to the fact that international organizations receive their legitimacy from states, and that the boundaries of legitimate conduct is measured according to the qualitative standards of democratic decision making. By swimming against the current, international organizations can barely sustain themselves, which points out to a systemic need for their political influence to be augmented and decision making mechanisms strengthened, if they intend to survive on the long run.

Works Cited in the two articles:

Coicaud, Jean-Marc. “Reflections on international organisations and international legitimacy: constraints, pathologies, and possibilities” International Social Science Journal Volume 53, Issue 170, (2002) pp. 523 – 536

Finnemore, Martha “Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Uni-polarity: Why Being a Unipole Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be,” World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January, 2009), pp. 58-85.

Grovogui, Siba N. “Post Colonialism: Power and legitimacy in the international order” in Dunne, Kurki and Smith (eds.) International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity Oxford University Press (New York: 2007) pp. 239-245
Keohane, Robert O. “Decisiveness and Accountability as Part of a Principled Response to Nonstate Threats” Ethics & International Affairs Volume 20, Issue 2, (2004) Pages 219 – 224

Kurth, J. “Humanitarian Intervention After Iraq: Legal Ideals Vs. Military Realities,” Orbis, Vol. 50, No 1 (Winter, 2006), pp. 87 – 101

Lake, David “Relational Authority and Legitimacy in International Relations” American Behavioral Scientist Volume 53 Number 3 (November 2009) pp. 331-353

Lawrence, Robert Z. “International Organisations: The Challenge of Aligning Mission, Means and Legitimacy” World Economy vol. 31(11), November (2008) pp. 1455-1470,

Mulligan, Shane P. “The Uses of Legitimacy in International Relations” Millennium – Journal of International Studies volume 34, no: 2, 2006. pp. 349-375

Willis, Katie. Theories and Practices of Development. Routhledge (New York: 2005)

Legitimacy is an age old political concept. It implies the acknowledged right of leaders to govern. Although the concept itself is not new, the requirements for being considered legitimate are constantly changing.
In the international arena, this change reflects the political interests and values of a variety of states. More powerful states are more influential in determining the norms and boundaries of international organizations. Today, the concept is increasingly moving towards being understood in terms of democratic accountability, implying that any “legitimate” international actor must take into account how states evaluate the creation and enforcement of normative guidelines for state behaviour. Stemming from the principle of inclusiveness, international organizations are the main forums where the legitimacy of such guidelines and their implementation is determined.

In this series of articles, I will discuss how the very idea of democratic legitimacy poses both ideational and material challenges to International Organizations. We can see examples of this in the dynamics of decision making processes where powerful states reward less powerful states for compliance and support and in the inadequacy of material capabilities of enforcement caused by low levels of institutionalization.

In this first article, I will show how we can connect the idea of Legitimacy with International Organizations.

It may appear questionable at first to connect international legitimacy and international organisations. However, despite their limitations and shortcomings, and the imperfect political instruments that their structure and mandates generate, international organisations are part of a mission for international legitimacy, for a regulated and inclusive conduct of international relations. By putting cost sharing and long term perspectives involving collective interests on the international agenda, they play an important role in keeping order in international relations. Their success in playing this role, when judged only based on the success of enforcement of their normative agenda, can appear to be low. However, their very existence is a manifestation of a need for recognition of mutual interests and normative guidelines, and just like any manifestation with enough influential political weight behind it, this too has effects on social interaction amongst states. In this sense, international organizations are “…an expression of defence, promotion, and projection of a socialised vision of international relations that is key to the claims and gradual implementation of a sense of international legitimacy”.

The legitimacy of international organisations originates from states, since they were created by states, and it was some of the most powerful of them (the major democratic nations of the Western World, beginning with the United States) that shaped the essential aspects of their normative and operational outline. Yet the success of any international organization in achieving its articulated goals is dependent on its authority. Increasingly, the authority of an institution depends on the belief that it is considered to be legitimate by those who are to be governed by its rules. It becomes obvious that legitimacy is a social and relational phenomenon since the concept is only relevant in a particular social context in which consensual recognition by a multiplicity of other actors is necessary. What this means is that even the most powerful of states cannot create legitimacy single-handedlyand that it can only be given by others. It is conferred either by peers, as when great powers accept or reject the actions of another power, or by those upon whom power is exercised. This is due to the reason that legitimacy implies a right to make rules and enforce them.

This right is conferred either through the quality of the processes used to produce the rules or the quality of the results achieved. Thus one prerequisite for an international organization to be considered legitimate is achieved through following established procedures of authorization and activity that are consistent with standards conforming to a widely accepted conventional understanding of fairness and equality, even if they are not of perfect justice. The procedures must include significant transparency, mechanisms for accountability, and integrity. These mechanisms are a set of practices that are consistent with the stated purposes of the institution, and increasingly the ones that related to decision making are moving towards setting “accountability” as a yardstick of measuring legitimacy.

Accountability is a democratic principle advocating that policy-makers have to ‘‘give an account’’ to the public or other people affected by decisions made (in the case of international organizations, these accountability holders are member states). This requires: “(1) a set of standards to which they are held to account; (2) relevant information available to the accountability holders; and (3) the ability of the accountability holders to sanction the policy-makers.” Democratic accountability’s supposed strength is its participatory nature – many people are involved in making new rules – and in theory it is designed to facilitate popular rule. However in the case of International organizations, the relationship between the democratic quality and the efficiency of decision making seems to be negative. In other words, as the decision making process becomes more democratic and thus more inclusive, it becomes harder to acquire a decision that makes all participants happy and is feasible to realize.

International organisations have worked hard to cope with and overcome the limitations of necessary participation by individual member states. From the beginning, they have attempted, through employing various complex legal and bureaucratic procedures, to bypass the dividing and disrupting effects of bringing such diversity together. They have tried to alter and transform to homogenized values and to reach out for more international reciprocity, shared responsibility, and accountability. International organisations have not only undertaken to secure for themselves a type and level of legitimacy that can balance out the unhappy aspects of national legitimacy due to state shortcomings, but also have sought to complement and enhance national legitimacy by supplementing state actions whenever and wherever needed, and also contributed to the change of state identity and its opening up to the world’s new multilateral thinking.

However, the end result seems to be diverse. Regardless of the accomplishments of the past years, the response to the question whether international organizations have been successful has remained somewhat unclear. The inward-looking perspectives and gaps among states have obviously not disappeared and have never ceased to preoccupy international organisations and damage their legitimacy. This is revealed first in the relative lack of convergence and consistency in values and policies within international organisations. This issue is less of a concern for specialised international organisations that deal with highly technical matters. But it is a real hardship when it comes to international organisations that have a symbolic meaning, as a consequence of which also gives them a strategic position, such as the United Nations. These organisations tackle issues such as economic growth, development, and security, issues where much is at stake because of the actual risks involved, and over which there is often controversy on how to deal with any problem. Such organisations are nonetheless expected to play a leading role in handling such problems. Therefore the tendency of these organisations to lack convergence and consistency in their values and policies is a problem. Their inclination towards a not truly institutionally embedded, disorganised course of ideas and actions from one organisation to another or even from one policy to another within the same organisation, due to disagreements over values and policies, is clearly inadequate in solving these immense problems and also it sends the wrong message in terms of the institution’s credibility.

The effects of divergence and inconsistency are not good for the credibility of international organisations for a number of reasons. First, they are unlikely to produce positive outcomes, since eventually poor positive results are acquired through incoherence, noncorrespondence, and irregularity in the policies that are being made. The reduction of policies to flamboyant rhetoric and half hearted cosmetic enforcement from which no significant improvement can really be expected, and the raging policy sectionalism (including decisions and actions taken on the basis of the narrow and segmented support often generated by divergence and inconsistency) are no substitute for real and powerful change. In addition, divergence and inconsistency create a visible impression of confusion and inefficiency within and outside organisations. This clearly undermines the worth of the organisation, as perceived internally and externally, but more importantly, also diminishes the sense of overall meaning and validity of the mandate that the organisation is supposed to implement, hence giving way to complaints such as “UN has no real power”, and the statement by the former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, to say “there is no united nations – there is an international community that can occasionally be led by the most powerful nation in the world when it suits our interests”– as he does here:

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When seen from this angle, the debates in the Security Council authorizing or not authorizing the use of force before the Iraq war demonstrate that the UN needs more systematic processes to assure accountability. Security Council authorization is “… like someone writing a blank check” : the council neither directs the use of the military forces involved, nor can it hold the great powers that use them accountable for their actions and, it cannot punish powerful states that exceed the limits of UN authorization. As a result, even when a strong case for forcible action can be made, states not in the inner circle are bound to remain unconvinced. The gap between proclaimed future actions and the actual deeds is often large and sometimes at counterpoints to one another. Without the ability to hold the interveners accountable, and impose sanctions on them if they violate their pledges or if their justifications for intervention turn out to be wildly wrong, these states may prefer to take the course of inaction. Accountability is therefore a precondition for decisiveness: for the willingness of large numbers of states to support forcible interventions.

My emphasis on the absence of convergence and consistency that characterises the initiatives of international organisations should not be seen as a position that ignores or rejects the positive character of these disagreements. Giving states the benefit of the doubt, it would be fair to say that through debate, even international institutions can reach an equitable decision as to what should be done to work out the issues in sight. The reason is that disagreements on ideas, values and policies are the driving force behind public institutions. Public institutions cannot exist and be legitimate without such debates going on all the time. Nor does it mean that evolving contexts and problems cannot call for changes of values, policies, and strategies. Instead my critique of the lack of convergence and consistency particularly points to “the shortcomings of representation, participation, and decision-making procedures that give rise to institutional pathologies” in international organisations.

Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby. Six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about these events at the National Press Club and urge the government to publicly confirm their reality.

One of them, ICBM launch officer Captain Robert Salas, was on duty during one missile disruption incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base and was ordered to never discuss it. Another participant, retired Col. Charles Halt, observed a disc-shaped object directing beams of light down into the RAF Bentwaters airbase in England and heard on the radio that they landed in the nuclear weapons storage area. Both men will provide stunning details about these events, and reveal how the U.S. military responded.

Read more:http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS166901+15-Sep-2010+PRN20100915

The United Nations has denied speculation that it is to appoint an astrophysicist as Earth’s representative to extraterrestrial life-forms.

Rumors had been circulating regarding the appointment of Malaysian astrophysicist Mazlan Othman – director of the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs – to the role of ‘first contact point for aliens’.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/odd/news/a278975/un-denies-appointing-alien-ambassador.html

The UN’s top Chinese official was forced to make a shame-faced apology after drunkenly ranting to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, it was revealed today.
Sha Zukang, the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, was ‘deeply apologetic’ when he went to see the Secretary General the following morning, a UN spokesman said.
He made the comments after initially paying tribute to the UN leader at a retreat for senior staff , reportedly saying: ‘I know you never liked me Mr Secretary General – well, I never liked you, either.
‘I didn’t want to come to New York. It was the last thing I wanted to do. But I’ve come to love the UN and I’m coming to admire some things about you.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the 62-year-old added: ‘You’ve been trying to get rid of me. You can fire me any time, you can fire me today.’
The 15 minute-long speech at the Austrian ski resort of Alpbach also singled out American colleague Bob Orr, from the executive office of the secretary-general.
‘I really don’t like him: he’s an American and I really don’t like Americans,’ he said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1310810/Chinese-UN-diplomat-Sha-Zukang-apologises-Ban-Ki-moon-drunken-rant.html

Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday withdrew a demand for foreign peacekeepers to calm deadly ethnic unrest in the country’s south as some reports suggested that the rioting was deliberately provoked.

Otunbayeva said foreign forces were no longer needed as the unrest between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz around the cities of Jalalabad and Osh was abating after five days of bitter clashes.

Uzbekistan accepted tens of thousands of ethnic Uzbek refugees who crossed the border but has now shut the frontier, leaving thousands waiting to cross in desperate conditions, Agence France-Presse correspondents reported.

Read the whole thing: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=kyrgyzstan-drops-foreign-troops-demand-2010-06-15

Pro-Israel advocates have confirmed that last week’s flotilla consisted mainly of terrorists and terrorist-sympathizers. Had the blockade been broken, Gaza would have somehow become an Iranian stronghold.  It is for that reason that Netanyahu and supporters alike found the raid, in which nine Turkish activists were killed, justified.  After all, in Netanyahu’s own words: “Gaza is a terror state funded by the Iranians, and therefore we must try to prevent any weapons from being brought into Gaza by air, sea and land.”

For the last week, those in favour of the IDF’s actions on that day have presented the Israeli claims as substantive proof.

The Israeli story: The Israelis claimed that the IDF asked the flotilla to stop sailing towards the Gaza strip and be boarded.  After a quick search, the activists would be able to distribute aid to the Gazans, under Israeli supervision. Of course, that never happened. When the IDF tried to peacefully board the Mavi Marmara, they were met with brutality. For that reason, the IDF acted on the premise of self-defence.

However, the Turks have conducted forensic research on the nine corpses. They have claimed that a number of the activists were shot in the back of the head. This shows that, contrary to the Israeli sources, some of the activists were fleeing the confrontations rather than engaging in a futile melee against armed soldiers.

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