rushmore or turtle bay

Though the selection of cosmopolitan New York as the location for the ensemble of buildings that comprise the headquarters of the United Nations—completed in 1952 with adjunct offices in the Hague, Vienna, Nairobi and Geneva—might seem like the natural choice now (though one could imagine other candidates in Toronto, Washington, DC, St Petersburg, Los Angeles) we learn from 99% Invisible (also available in audio format) that more than two hundred and fifty candidate sites competed with one another (see also) to host the intergovernmental organisation with one of those contenders being the Badlands of South Dakota not far from Mount Rushmore garnering the support of several champions.
Aside from virtually limitless space for a planned city of consulates, assembly halls and housing for diplomats, the geographical location of the proposed location in the centre of the US was seen as a compromise between European delegates that favoured the eastern seaboard and Asian members who preferred the west coast for the same reason of ease of travel. The planning committee was finally lured to settle on Manhattan after the offer of six square blocks of prime real estate by philanthropist and conservationist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Though making the case for a rural HQ presently might seem a bit far-fetched (though perhaps not—what with many of us teleworking), it’s nonetheless interesting to try to imagine how the character and decisions of the UN might be informed by their whereabouts.

wipo

Successor United Nations speciality agency and successor to the Bureaux Internationaix Réunis pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle (BIRPI) established by the Berne and Paris Conventions in 1893, the World Intellectual Property Organisation entered into force on this day in 1970, the anniversary since enshrined annually as World Intellectual Property Day. The agency’s agenda is to harmonise international law regarding patent and copyright protection, managing treaties regarding access to knowledge and ensuring proper disposition of protected and registered materials throughout its lifecycle—from extension of trademarks to release into the public domain—arbitrating disputes, and monitoring the global status of said practises and protections.

for some reason, funded largely by the united states, yet very china centric

Employing much the same garbage rhetoric as he used to announce the US withdrawal from the Universal Postal Union, Trump—having ignored or disdained the pandemic outbreak of corona virus for months squandering valuable time—is telling the United Nations’ agency, the World Health Organisation, yesterday on UN World Health Day, that it “really blew it” on the deadly disease and is threatening to withhold funding.
The WHO identified a localised cluster of a novel influenza-like illness back in November and began monitoring the situation, declaring an international health emergency on 30 January prompted countries to act in the ensuing six weeks to include restriction on movement, curfews, lockdowns and social distancing. America however failed to take the matter with any gravity until the past two weeks and the message and mitigating measures implemented have been uneven and sloppy at best. While the WHO and other supranational entities may have to blunt their criticism of their backers (the US contribution to the woefully underfunded yet agile and effective WHO is about fourteen percent of its operating budget—less than a billion dollars biannually), the accusation and threat have nothing to do with the UN’s stance towards China but only in the desperate search for another scapegoat for his own seriously blowing it that will result in tens of thousands of deaths that could have been avoided.

argonaut conference

Following on from the Tehran Conference held in November of 1943 under the above code-name, the leaders of the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union—with the conspicuous absence of French and other Allied Forces, convened near the Black Sea resort of Yalta in a palatial ensemble on the city’s outskirts beginning on this day in 1945 to address the reorganisation and self-determination Europe and Germany post-war. Though the ostensible objectives were to promote peace and reestablish invaded and annexed nations status quo all parties to the talk came with their own agendas and shortly after peace was achieved with liberation from Nazi Germany declared the Cold War erupted.

Churchill wanted to extend Western style democracies through central and eastern Europe. Roosevelt wanted the Soviet Union to join the United Nations and pressed Stalin for his support in fighting Imperial Japan in the Pacific. Stalin, having accomplished and sacrificed the most militarily and had a domineering presence in comparison to the other negotiators, insisted that the Soviet Union retain a sphere of influence in eastern Europe and the Balkans. After some rigorous debate, it was settled that Germany would be split into four occupied zones (with the French concession carved out of the British and American zones, with an exploratory committee examining further dismemberment of Germany into six nations) and undergo war crimes trials and de-militarisation, a reparations council would be established, and Stalin pledged free elections in a restored Poland and allowed American bombers to pre-position in its Far East. Dissatisfied with the outcome of the Crimean and the later Potsdam summit and growing wise to the voting system of the UN and the veto powers that the USSR would have, Churchill commissioned (in secret) the first Cold War contingency plans—Operation Unthinkable—to dislodge Soviet troops in Germany and liberate Poland should Stalin not uphold his end of the bargain, but such actions were deemed too risky from a geopolitical standpoint and were abandoned.

catch and kill or inquiring minds would like to know

The United Nations has appointed special rapporteurs to investigate the apparent spear-phishing attack on the mobile phone of a titan of industry (and newspaper owner) by a member of the House of Saud and heir apparent to the throne (who ordered the brutal murder of a dissenting correspondent of above media outlet) which seems to have put the private life of magnate into the hands of the Saudi intelligence apparatus, including incriminating evidence of an extra-martial affair.  It is intimated that the Saudis then leaked these compromising photographs and texts to a rival media outlet (which first threatened blackmail), a no-account tabloid that published the salacious details. No ally of Trump, who seemed to revel in his the break-up of his marriage and had generally obsessed over his wildly successful business model and critical reporting on him, the yellow press in question has been supportive both of Trump and the Crown Prince and has a record of burying or altogether quashing stories unflattering to either.

interbellum or roaring twenties

Framed during the Paris Peace Conference six days earlier, the League of Nations (Société des Nations, previously) held its first council meeting on this day in 1920. With an executive body comprised of Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan and France (the victors of World War I) and charged with not only maintaining peace but also championing social justice for native inhabitants of colonial holdings, fair labour standards, global health and combatting human trafficking, the organisation lacked the authority and means to enforce its mandate through sanctions or military interventions.

With the outbreak of World War II, it became clear that the supranational body had not been invested with the powers it required to prevent the revanchment of hostilities, and though unable to carry on with its functions except in a wholly nominal sense with the headquarters in Geneva unoccupied for nearly six years after the onset of war, the League of Nation was not formally dissolved until 19 April 1946, the Tehran Conference three years prior recommending it being disbanded and reconstituted into a new, stronger institution. The finally assembly was mostly a housekeeping session, transferring assets to its successor organisation, the United Nations, and the remittance of reserve funds that member nations had furnished. Chaired by the Right Honourable Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (*1864 – †1958), Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, one of the chief architects of the League of Nations and ardent adherent to its ideals and concept it stood for, he concluded the meeting:


“Let us boldly state that aggression wherever it occurs and however it may be defended, is an international crime, that is the duty of every peace-loving state to resent it and employ whatever force is necessary to crush it, that the machinery if the Charter, no less than the machinery of the Covenant, is sufficient for this purpose if properly used, and that every well-disposed citizen of every state should be ready to undergo any sacrifice in order to maintain peace … I venture to impress upon my hearers that the great work of peace is resting not only on the narrow interests of our own nations, but even more on those great principles of right and wrong which nations, like individuals, depend.

The League is dead. Long live the United Nations.”

resolution 217

The United Nations’ first major legislative achievement came on this day in 1948 with the General Assembly’s adoption and proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, later each article committed to these stone pillars in Nuremberg, Straße der Menschenrechte.

The annual commemoration coincides with signatory and founding member state Sweden’s Nobeldagen, the date established in 1901 on the fifth anniversary of the death of the benefactor Alfred Nobel and first award ceremony (see previously) took place. All laureates, other than the recipient (including organisations) of the Peace Prize, are banqueted at Stockholm City Hall—with the exception, usually on the same day, presented in Oslo.

iou

As if it wasn’t chilling enough that the grifter and bully in the White House would compel his own weather monitoring services to revise their forecast map to match his own mischaracterization, covertly disclosed communications suggest that United Nations’ International Organisation for Migration (IOM) is practising self-censorship in its agenda to skirt issues not aligned to US policy and politics for fear the US would pull funding and support.

While it might be seen as just a shrewd measure by some at the organisation to de-emphasise certain points for the pitch and focus on climate change and sustainable growth any way, the agency is compromising itself too far by conceding—however superficially—to Trump and his outlook on the world.  A rather nominal philanthropic donation could ensure that the programme could maintain its independence and integrity for decades.

space race

Via Mysterious Universe, on this fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 from Cape Canaveral we learn that according to one imminent historian, John F Kennedy, who famously charged his nation with committing “itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” did not intend for the Space Race to become the bi-polar, ideological struggle and ongoing rivalry that it since morphed into but rather entertained it might be an international collaborative effort that might help foster peace and cooperation.
In an interview granted to the Telegraph (possible paywall) ahead of his book release, John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute and former member of the NASA advisory council. Delivering that speech before Congress in May of 1961 with the Bay of Pigs standoff only recently diffused, US-Soviet tensions were heightened and the private meeting between Nikita Khrushchev and JFK in Vienna a few weeks later was probably dominated by negotiation on nuclear proliferation and spheres of influence, but there is evidence to suggest that Kennedy might have broached the idea of a joint mission to the lunar surface. Later even entertained before a United Nations assembly, it’s a matter of some speculation why this did not occur but is nonetheless satisfying to indulge what the common effort might have looked like for geopolitics. Though crewed landing on the Moon was not itself a shared endeavour, the détente and cooperation was ushered in with the last mission of the programme itself, with the Apollo-Soyuz test project conducted in July of 1975.

flagellation, regulation, integrations, meditations, united nations, congratulations

Referred by Messy Nessy Chic, we are afforded a chance to spend some time in the Montreal hotel honeymoon suite (Room #1742) of John and Yoko Ono Lennon refurbished ahead of the fiftieth anniversary of the Bed-Ins for peace that began in late March 1969 in Amsterdam with a two-weeks intervention. The next iteration was planned for New York but Lennon was barred entry into the US over a previous marijuana possession charge and so moved to Canada. Having arrived on 26 May and inviting guests over the ensuing week like Timothy Leary, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsburg, Tommy Smothers and others, all took part in a recorded chorus of the anthem “Give Peace a Chance” in the suite on this day.

principal organ

Germany’s vice-chancellor suggested to France that the country should turn its permanent seat on the United Nations’ Security Council into one for the European Union as a whole.
The five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the UK and the US—all World War II allies, were appointed to prevent the outbreak of future conflicts and share power with ten other member states that serve on a rotating basis, but the five have the crucial power to veto and block resolutions of the supranational governing body. What do you think about that? It is unclear whether Paris would be willing to abdicate in favour of the EU, and critics of the UN hierarchy call this unconditional power undemocratic and leads to gridlock and inaction. The United States, infamously not a part of the League of Nations (the UN’s predecessor) and the conspicuous absence was considered a big factor in the failings of the organisation, refused to join the UN in 1945 unless it was guaranteed a veto.

7x7

tarnkappe: world’s first graphene jacket gives it wearer super-powers

like my mom used to say, if you need calcium, eat a milkman—yep, she said it: Ze Frank (previously) returns with true facts about carnivorous plants, via The Art of Darkness

67/p churyumov-gerasimenko: peruse one hundred thousand striking images of the alien landscape of the comet that the Rosetta probe rendezvoused with

global statesman: former United Nations Secretary-General and Nobel laureate Kofi Annan has passed away

forever blowing bubbles: a look back at the financial crash of 2008 and realising how little things have changed

pulsars: instructive and interactive coding tutorials on creating generative art (previously here and here), via Waxy

take care, tcb: some superlative obituaries and appreciations on the passing of Aretha Franklin 

special rapporteur

Unsurprisingly, US has announced its intent to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council following criticism of Trump’s practise of separating children from their families and interning them in concentration camps. Administration officials moreover cite what they characterise as the council’s disproportionate focus on the Israel-Palestine dispute.

the purge

Courtesy of Miss Cellania’s links, we learn that a US State Department advisor, formerly a food industry lobbyist turned wine-blogger who goes by the handle “Vino Vixen” has been surreptitiously vetting the political sympathies and loyalty to cult leader Trump’s of career employees at the World Health Organisation, the United Nations and the Department of State itself. Her primary investigatory strategy, which is only compounding the exodus of veteran diplomats and an irreplaceable wealth of institutional knowledge, apparently consist primarily of nosing around staff members’ social media accounts for signals of lingering faith in the policies of Obama or the potential for independent, critical thought.

rocket man or unga chunga

The imbecile Dear Leader was given a platform at the United Nations general assembly which to the consternation and alarm of not only those US allies in the region but I’d venture every soul departed, on Earth and yet to come pledged to “totally destroy” North Korea and its twenty-five million residence should it continue to menace its neighbours and America.
Despite his past criticism for the international body for inaction and inefficiency (and cheap emerald marble backsplash), he flinched, thankfully, in his pugilistic rhetoric by heaping the onus on the UN by saying that hopefully a military response wouldn’t be necessary: “We’ll see—that’s what the UN is there for.” Such bluster is not only a grave embarrassment that strips America of all credibility—and although Americans might distance themselves from their leadership, the rest of the world is losing patience fast with those apologies and pretenses—it carries consequences and responsibilities that Dear Leader has proven himself incapable of assuming.

goodwill ambassador

After just two months in office, the United Nations decided that they had to strip Wonder Woman of her diplomatic credentials as a role-model for feminist empowerment, petitioners deciding that the super-hero was rather the antithesis, embodying the expectations of the established patriarchy.
Not only was the costume of the non-canonical goddess considered insensitive to much of the world that she represented with many present seeing her appointment as frivolous, more the objectification of women was so prominent in US headlines and politics to champion women’s rights with such an image seemed inappropriate. While I am very glad to learn that the UN has a memory for yesterday’s news, I do hope our heroine finds another engagement soon.

tonkin ghosts or mess-o'-potamia

Finally released seven years after the beginning of the investigation and five years after its conclusion, with publication delayed several times, the Chilcot Report (or the Iraq Inquiry) brought back a surge of memories and is confirmation of what many if not most of us suspected:
diplomatic solutions had not been exhausted, Iraq presented little imminent threat beyond its neighbours and the actions of the US and the UK undermined the United Nations’ authority through the unilateral determination, the case for war of their leaders. Legality and thus the ability to indict or exonerate anyone of war crimes was outside of the scope of the investigation, and thirteen years on it is difficult to conceive how a world with or without Hussein might be. The forces that rushed in to occupy that void in power does seem rather like a hydra instead of any improvement, and prosecuting regime-change under once dubious and now patently false fears and scaremongering seems beyond regrettable.  Sadly, this publication will not vindicate the suffering of Iraqis or service members that have been pained by this pretext, and I wonder if the political fall-out will be momentous and haunting enough to ensure that such adventures are not embarked upon again.  The world’s threshold and memory sometimes seems woefully inadequate.

guerre civil

Indulging the counter-factual (supposing an alternate history) risks belittling suffering as it happened and building up for oneself a grasping sort of fantasy world, but in that split one also calls to account the calculated omissions and permissions of other powers. The Spanish Civil War that simmered to its critical point in 1936 is something incomprehensible, with long chains of causation reaching back generations and projected forward four decades and more with only drives attributed to make sense of the terrible and theatrical violence. I cannot claim to understand what each faction represented, but to the victor goes the spoils, like Qaddafi, who only reigned a slightly shorter period of time.
The unlearnt lessons of this war that was not contained to a domestic dispute are cemented with Picasso’s mural Guernica that distil the horrors of war that appears at the entrance to the United Nations’ Security Council chambers—at least, that is, from 1985 to 2009 with a notable veiling in 2003 during the Iraq War (when the American defence minister Colin Powell did not want to speak with backdrop of a mutilated horse’s ass) and afterwards the tapestry was sent on tour pending renovations. One is invited to imagine viscerally what befell the victims of this one arbitrary episode among many, but I think too that one is remembered as to how this conflict was also what we’d now call a proxy-war (though certainly not the first, nor the last). The struggle to take region, town by town, did not remain an internal affair for long, with Hitler and Mussolini almost immediately siding with the Nationalists, sending materiel that included the planes that bombed the quiet village of Guernica. British Gibraltar, through the UN’s predecessor that was supposed to prevent such escalations among members, placed an embargo, but with anti-Communist sentiments, did little to quell hostilities. Mexico and the USSR supported the Republicans but garnered a paucity of outside support. Whether the members of the future Axis Powers acted only out of ideology or wanted to destabilise the UK and France is unclear, but it seems as if other stances were assumed, with less entanglement and partisanship, the future might have played out very differently.

day-trip: bonn

As H was away this weekend for a conference in Berlin, I thought it would be fitting for me to take a trip to the other Federal City (Bundesstadt), Bonn, former capital of West Germany, to scout out the area. Before coming to Bonn, on the Rhine’s southern reaches of megalopolis of the industrialised Ruhrgebiet and surrounded by the Siebengebirge—the seven verdant peaks with picturesque valleys, I stopped in the vineyard village of Königswinter and climbed the first ascent of the Drachenfels, the dragon cliffs.

There was a funicular train or donkeys for hire for journey but I passed those to try the steep hike myself. It was very beautiful with the Post Tower of Bonn’s skyline already visible and a host of castles and fortifications hewn out of the mountain-face but on this day, I only wanted to make it to the first station and hold off on exploring the whole trail until we could see it to together. Having learned about this strange attraction quite by accident and then having planned this little trip, I could not skip a visit to the bizarre, Art Nouveau temple to composer and myth-maker Richard Wagner, the Nibelungenhalle, dedicated in 1913 by a devoted fan-club on what would have been Wagner’s hundredth birthday. The interior included a lot of documentation apologising for the “Swastika” motif—explaining it was ancient Germanic rune and had a series of murals of the saga of the Ring Cycle.

The woman at the counter turned on the music after I had come in—being the first visitor, I suppose, and there were a lot of random, non-contiguous artefacts present that made me think of the curating work in the museum of the Colossus of Prora which was a lot of fun to try to unravel but I suppose sadly it’s not there any longer since there converting the Nazi resort to luxury apartments. After viewing this altar, one was to walk down through an artificial grotto (which was a little a frightening because it was not illuminated although one could see the way out ahead, one had to trust that the path was manmade and free of obstacles) that led to a small garden and then quite inexplicable to a good old-fashioned roadside reptile farm, with lots of anacondas and pythons curled up and rest and a couple of lively crocodiles.

I walked back down to the Drachenfels base camp and proceeded on to the main attraction, Bonn, only a few kilometres away. Bonn was chosen to be the capital for symbolic reasons, a small city and not the nearby Köln or Frankfurt or Hamburg that might have seemed more reasonable, because Berlin, east and west, was enshrined as the true capital and the situation was understood as only temporary.

Had a larger, more prominent city been created as the West German Hauptstadt, then Berlin might have lost its rightful place, though the temporary situation lasted for over four decades. Also the industrial heft of the Ruhr region and its natural resources was a point of contention just after the war. I enjoyed a very nice stroll along the Rhein and up and down the length of Adenauer Allee, the once and present corridor of power and governance, with six federal offices still stationed along this boulevard and venue also to the representative second residence of the Chancellor and cabinet.

The route paralleling the river, begins with the castle since turned into a university and concludes with a United Nations campus housing nineteen institutions. In between were the former residences of the chancellery, which were disappointingly inaccessible it seemed—although I was excepting to be able to traipse through the rumpus-room, I did think I might see the bungalow up close and not through a fence with bales of razor-wire. I also passed the zoological museum that hosted the Bundesrat and Bundestag for the first few years of the provisional government.

A stuffed giraffe and other taxidermical creations were witness to proceedings as they could not be removed from the gallery without being decapitated. Despite not having access to the halls of power, it was nonetheless, an interesting experience to reflect on everything that had transpired on this one street. Aside from the secular, recent history, I was surprised to learn of Bonn’s religious connections and significance as the seat of the archdiocese and did not have the wherewithal to explore the old town too much—there was some festival that rendered the market-square pretty hectic and crowded—but it did of course seem worthy of further investigation, with Beethoven’s home, its Roman origins and fortification and many corporate headquarters as a sign of homesteading in the former capital as prognosis for what’s yet to come.

human rights watch

At a very urgent juncture, the world was administered extreme unction in the aftermath of World War II in the form of the United Nations whose working-group applied the aspiration of universal human rights, which is a very good and needed model to aim for. This convention, however, is somewhat effacing to if not the true underlying factors then at least to that propaganda that inspired much of the outrage and tragedy that is failing to impart any real lessons unfortunately.

The mass deception and hysteria broke out owing in part (if not wholly) by appealing to scapegoats and the worst of people’s prejudices, applying the template of a host majority’s fears on minority groups, defined as outsider or other by the prevailing, dominant outlook. Of course, those draftsmen would prefer those others to be loyal adherents to progressive causes and progressive thinking, but the concept of a universal right worth protecting also obligates recognising a cultural identity—by that very difference—which may be in stark opposition to what’s been enshrined. There’s plenty of room for interpretation and the notion that one could choose to worship any way he or she sees fit or not at all or the inherent equality among the sexes, as I feel and values I cherish, could become quite a problem for others (given that this lack of choice in the matter is the way and the way it has always been and there’ve not been complaints worth registering), as could peddling a certain style of democracy over others, as the Swiss, for instance, might regard governance American style wholly inadequate and theirs the highest standard. Not that we should not hope for egalitarian goals and convictions that respectful of others nor that a certain set of ideals engenders greater foreignness but we ought not forget that the notion of rights is something malleable and conceived to protect those that may not ascribe to them.