THE United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth’s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting.

Poverty eradication lessons and the UN Millennium Summit.

Now is the time to make women’s health an international priority. The international community demands it; the women of the world require it; and the families of the world depend on it.

Written by Rep. Yvette Clarke for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

With General Petraeus’ stop on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric now halfway over, it’s worth taking a moment to unpack the unchallenged, false assertions and implications he’s piled up thus far on his media tour. We decided to look into the claims he made about “oil spots” of “progress” during his interview with NBC’s David Gregory. Both claims were absolute fantasies, and the remaining journalists on Petraeus’ tour owe their viewers more rigorous skepticism than what we saw on Meet the Press.

The new United Nations report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan shows that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is failing, even according to the military’s own doctrine. According to COIN theory, if you can’t prevent your own side from killing civilians, and you can’t offer credible assurances of security to the population, you lose. And, guess what? Judged by its own standards, the U.S. military is losing. It’s time to end this mission.

I’m asking you to do two things. Numero uno. Sharpen your eyes and ears to the noun the corporate media uses to reference you. Numero dos. Every time you are referred to as a consumer (which is virtually every time) say resolutely to yourself, “Citizen.”

Burn pits and depleted uranium weaponry used in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused a whole generation of Veterans to become ill and disabled and created areas to toxic wastelands

On the International Day of Support of Victims of Torture, I offer an analysis of where the fight against U.S. torture currently stands, as well as a retrospective of the history of the development of U.S. torture policy. In particular, the role of U.S. behavioral scientists in the construction of torture techniques is explored.

Andy Worthington is posting portions of the United Nations’ “Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism,” a detailed, 186-page report issued last February. The UN report was hardly reported by either the U.S. press or the blogosphere, and deserves wide dissemination.

There is one disturbing diary up now about Saudi Arabia and here is one more.
It turns out that Saudi Arabia has convinced Qatar and Kuwait to join together to block a U.N. Climate Change study, in an apparent effort to protect their Oil Based Economy.
While there has been an orchestrated effort by Fossil Fuel lobbyists to weaken international Climate Change legislation, this is the first time a state Government has openly blocked reforms.
The immediate losers are the people who are members of A.O.S.I.S. – the Alliance of Small Island States – and what they have to lose by this action.
crossposted at Huffington Post, Square State, FDL, and PRAER.org.