Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize

Bjoern Amland
AP 12.10.2010

Liu Xiaobo

"China was infuriated when the prestigious prize was awarded to the 54-year-old literary critic, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence on subversion charges brought after he co-authored a bold call for sweeping changes to Beijing's one-party communist political system. Beijing described the award as an attack on its political and legal system and has placed Liu's supporters, including his wife Liu Xia, under house arrest to prevent anyone from picking up his prize. On Friday, uniformed and plainclothes officers guarded the entrance to the compound in central Beijing where Liu Xia has lived since the October announcement that her husband would receive the prize. China also tightened a wide-ranging clampdown on dissidents and blocked some news websites ahead of the awarding ceremony. China has also pressured foreign diplomats to stay away from the Nobel ceremony...17 other countries have declined to attend, including Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba...China warned that attending the ceremony would be seen as a sign of disrespect."

Hackers and the Information War

Ian Drury
Mail Online 06.12.2010

"Julian Assange has distributed to fellow hackers an encrypted 'poison pill' of damaging secrets, thought to include details on BP and Guantanamo Bay.  He believes the file is his 'insurance' in case he is killed, arrested or the whistleblowing website is removed permanently from the internet.  Mr Assange - understood to be lying low in Britain - could be arrested by Scotland Yard officers as early as tomorrow... Mr Assange, a reclusive Australian, has infuriated and embarrassed the U.S. in recent months by releasing hundreds of thousands of classified documents."

The Security Council and the Cold War

Summary: Christine Gray.
International Law and the Use of Force. 
Oxford University Press (2004).
Chapter 7: "The UN and the Use of Force," pp. 195-205.

The UN Security Council was originally intended to be the locus of sovereignty for a new body of global governance. Made up of five permanent members--Russia, China, the UK, France, and the United States--and ten (?) more members elected for two-year terms, the Security Council was supposed to have direct command over its own armed forces, with which it could intervene, when necessary, to repair breachs of the peace or acts of aggression.  Its legal authority is mostly spelled out in Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

But that vision of global governance never came to pass.  First, the UN was unable to levy troops or commandeer resources the way Article 43 said it should be able to.  And second, the Soviet Union and the United States alternately used their veto powers to prevent the Security Council from authorizing interventions, effectively paralyzing it throughout the Cold War. Despite having been derailed by non-compliance with Article 43 and by superpower gridlock during the Cold War, in 1988 the Security Council again began to authorize interventions. But in them meantime, the General Assembly co-opted the authority to authorize interventions itself, giving rise to a practice now called 'peacekeeping', and started issuing recommendations to the Security Council on matters actively under its consideration.  

These actions were in direct violation of Articles 11 and 12 of the UN Charter, yet in spite of the lack of any legal justification, peacekeeping operations are now accepted as legal by all member states.  Fifteen instances of peacekeeping occurred during the Cold War, and Gray and others observe that the practice of peacekeeping underwent four distinct stages of development between 1948 and 1988: nascent (1948-56: Middle East, India/Pakistan, North Korea), assertive (1956-67: Suez, Lebanon, Congo, West New Guinea, Yemen, Cyprus, India/Pakistan, Dominican Republic), dormant (1967-73; no interventions), and resurgent (1974-1987: Suez, Golan Heights, Lebanon,  Iran-Iraq).   This process has greatly eroded the separation of powers between the General Assembly and the Security Council, and in practice the two now appear able to accomplish many of the same political functions.

Immediately following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, the Security Council passed Resolution 660, which declared a breach of international peace and security and demanded that Iraqi troops withdraw.  Shortly thereafter, the UN also passed Resolution 678, which authorized 'all necessary means' to uphold Resolution 660, a generally accepted euphemism for the use of force.  This was to be a model for subsequent authorizations.  [Incidentally, it is Resolution 678 that the UK used to justify its intervention in Iraq in 2003.  They claimed that Iraq's violation of the cease-fire agreement reinstated the authorization granted in Resolution 678, which had merely been suspended, not terminated.  In any case, Gray claims that "the optimism prevalent at the time of Resolution 678 has since dissipated." (205)]

Ethnic Violence in Kyrgystan

Associated Press
Guardian 06.17.2010

Kyrgyzstan's interim government has accused the country's deposed president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, of igniting longstanding ethnic tensions by sending gunmen in ski masks to shoot members of both groups. The government, which overthrew Bakiyev in April, also accuses the leader of corruption and says he and his supporters were attempting to damage official control of the south and reassert their control of the Afghan heroin trade in the area.  The official death toll on both sides is 189 but the true number appears to be far higher.  Many Kyrgyz have been killed but the victims appear to have been predominantly Uzbeks, traditional farmers and traders who speak a distinct but separate Turkic language and have traditionally been more prosperous than the Kyrgyz, who come from a nomadic tradition...A few parts of the south have been all but purged of ethnic Uzbeks. In other areas hundreds who had not fled piled up old cars on the streets, barricading themselves into their neighbourhoods.

Luke Harding
Guardian 06.27.2010

Kyrgyzstan's interim government tonight claimed victory in a controversial referendum, held just two weeks after 2,000 people were killed and tens of thousands were left homeless in ethnic violence. Rosa Otunbayeva, the country's acting leader, said she had won overwhelming support for her plan to create a new parliamentary system... Today's ballot was designed to legitimise the current government and to replace the country's abuse-prone presidential system. The new European-style model is a first in central Asia, which is run by authoritarian "super-presidents". A new government would be formed on 10 July, Otunbayeva said, without a "temporary" tag. But international observers and human rights groups today criticised the timing of the poll, which took place against a backdrop of the worst ethnic violence in central Asia for two decades. They also warned that the vote could exacerbate divisions between the north and south of the country and hasten its break-up, or lead to civil war.

The Security Council Rules the World

UN Charter
Chapter VII, Articles 39-42:

Article 39
The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

Article 40
In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable. Such provisional measures shall be without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned. The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with such provisional measures.

Article 41
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.

Article 42
Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.

Greek Anti-Austerity Measures

BBC 5.4.2010:

Greek public sector workers have stormed the Acropolis and scuffled with riot police after launching a 48-hour strike against austerity measures... Their action comes ahead of a nationwide general strike on Wednesday.  The austerity measures were outlined in a draft bill submitted to the Greek parliament and will be voted on by the end of the week.  They have been introduced in return for a 110bn euro (£95bn) international rescue package agreed for the country.  The measures include wage freezes, pension cuts and tax rises. They aim to achieve fresh budget cuts of 30bn euros over three years, with the goal of cutting Greece's public deficit to less than 3% of GDP by 2014. It currently stands at 13.6%. Union leaders say the cuts target low-income Greeks.