blessed britons

The President then put to vote a United Kingdom amendment to delete the additional article of the draft Declaration ... which declared that the rights proclaimed in the Declaration would also apply to any person belonging to the population of Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories...

The representative of the United Kingdom explained that article 2 of the draft Declaration laid down that every individual was entitled to the rights and freedoms proclaimed in the Declaration, without distinction of any kind. He argued that, if article 2 had any meaning and if its terms were sufficiently precise and enumerated sufficiently dearly the distinctions to be outlawed, there was no reason to add an additional article (article 3) stipulating that those rights applied to the inhabitants of the Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories.

— United Nations Yearbook Summary

mad world

We estimate that a massive $37 billion (47%) of the $79 billion in headline aid in 2004 was ‘phantom’, while real aid stood at only $42 billion. There was some improvement from 2003, with nearly all the increase in aid – otherwise known as Overseas Development Assistance or ODA – between 2003 and 2004 counting as real aid. However, even with this increase, our analysis suggests donors still contributed an average of only 0.14% of gross national income in real aid in 2004, or only one fifth of the UN target level. On average, donors give only $48 for each of their citizens in real aid each year – less than $1 a week.

— Real Aid II

of course it's about oil

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Submitted by antarchi on October 27, 2007 - 12:20.

Has the Iraq war been an oil war from the outset?
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan evidently thought so or so he indicated in a single sentence in his recent memoir: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." When asked, Gen. John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander who oversaw three and a half years of the American occupation of Iraq, agreed. "Of course it's about oil, we can't really deny that," he said during a roundtable discussion at Stanford University.

— Jack Miles

nuggets

blessed britons

mad world

of course it's about oil