Happy United Nations Day!

Yesterday marked the 65th anniversary of the birth of the United Nations. It was on October 24, 1945, that the U.N. Charter, signed four months earlier, entered into legal force. Few who were involved could have had the slightest notion of what the organization they were creating would eventually become.

When it was born in 1945, the U.N. had 51 members; today, it has 192. Its original mission of preventing war and preserving peace has been, at best, only partially successful. While there have been many failures, so to have there also been many successes. The U.N. helped stop aggression in Korea and Kuwait, and prevented conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, Central America, and parts of Asia from spiraling out of control. The roughly 2,500 U.N. peacekeepers who have died in the line of duty should never be forgotten.

Beyond the prevention of war and the preservation of peace, the U.N. has taken upon itself tasks for which it was never intended. Today, it is at the forefront in the fight against epidemic disease, global poverty, environmental degradation, nuclear proliferation, and a whole host of other problems. Organizations like UNICEF and UNHCR have worked to bring comfort to those afflicted by the horrors of war or natural disasters, while agencies like UNESCO have served to build cultural, scientific, and intellectual bonds between the disparate cultures of the world. While much work remains to be done, only a fool could assert that the world would be better off today without the U.N.

The U.N. is far from perfect. As with any large institution, there have been scandals and cases of corruption, and these problems need to be fixed. But beyond that, there is a need for fundamental reforms to give the U.N. greater flexibility and strength to act proactively in confronting global challenges. The U.N. Security Council needs to be expanded and the use of the national veto reformed. There must be a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and an independent Rapid Reaction Force designed to respond immediately to a crisis anywhere in the world. If these and other reforms were enacted, the U.N. would become an even more effective tool for human progress than it already is.

So, on this United Nations Day, let's remember the achievements of this great organization, while keeping firmly in mind the great challenges it will be called upon to face in the future.

MESSENGER Probe to Mercury Closing In On Its Target

If all goes as planned, exactly six months from now, a tiny American robotic spacecraft down near the Sun will fire its engine to slow itself down and allow it to settle into a stable orbit around the planet Mercury. If it is successful, the MESSENGER probe will not only become the first man-made object to enter orbit around Mercury, but will commence a year-long intense study of one of the most mysterious planets in the Solar System.

The name Messenger is both a tortured acronym (which stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment GEochemistry and Ranging) and a reference to the Roman god Mercury, who served as the messenger of the gods. It is the first exploratory mission to Mercury in three-and-a-half decades, and the first one devoted primarily to Mercury. The previous mission, Mariner 10, was focused on Venus and only flew past Mercury incidentally.

Mercury is sort of an orphan child as far as planets go. Mars has been studied by a veritable fleet of American, European, and Japanese orbiters and landers, while Venus, Jupiter and Saturn have also been visited by multiple spacecraft. Mercury has, until Messenger, been left out in the cold.

This is too bad, because Mercury is a fascinating world that has much to teach us. ecause it is so near the Sun, it is extremely difficult to study with Earth-based telescopes, making Messenger's mission all the more important. Mercury seems to have a reasonably strong magnetic field, suggesting a large molten core. There is tantlyzing evidence of water ice hidden in the craters on the north and south poles of the planet. It also appears to have an extremely thin atmosphere (referred to as an exosphere) which scientists are eager to learn more about.

Messenger is well equipped to study the planet. An impressive array of cameras, spectronometers, a laser altimeter, and other instruments will rigorously survey the geographical surface and probe the interior of the planet. The data sent back from Messenger should revolutionize our understanding of Mercury, and with it, our understand of the Solar System and our place within it.

However, it may be that Messenger is just a preview for an even bigger show. A combined European-Japanese probe is in the planning stages, called BepiColombo (after the scientist who first devised the gravity assist maneuver now commonly used by spacecraft throughout the Solar System). Currently planned for a 2014 launch and a 2020 orbital insertion at Mercury, the scientific instruments of this probe will be even more powerful than those of Messenger. While it is studying Mercury, it will also carry out experiments designed to increase our understanding of general relativity.

The exploration of space is a glorious collective enterprise undertaken on behalf of the entire human race by scientists from many nations and every conceivable background. It not only increases the overall knowledge of the human race, but it serves to demonstrate what is possible when human beings turn their intellectual powers away from the development of weapons of war and towards the enlightenment of the human mind.

Socially Responsible Investing

In a world that it now irretrievably globalized and interdependent, a large portion of economic activity is being handled by large, multinational corporations of no particular national loyalty. Global Citizens are neither libertarians nor socialists, so we neither fervently support nor fervently oppose this economic model. It is simply a reality.

Living in a world largely run by multinational corporations is essentially like riding in a bus controlled by a programmable robot which, barring any instructions to the contrary, will steer the bus to its destination along the quickest and least costly route. If the quickest and least costly route involves running over dogs, cats, children, and grandparents, and smashing its way through houses of worship or childrens' hospitals, it doesn't matter at all to the robot. He's just trying to get the bus to its destination as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Multinational corporations, if left unguided by their shareholders, will pursue maximum profits by any means necessary. They will not care a wink if their activities cause massive amounts of environment damage, destroy the lives of indigenous populations, trample of the human rights of their workers, produce and sell hideous weapons, and get people hooked on addictive products. Common sense government regulation can help alleviate these problems, but multinational corporations will use every legal trick in the book to circumvent whatever restrictions are put in their way.

Global Citizens must be the people who reprogram the robots driving the buses. They still want all the buses to reach their destinations (in other words, have a successful and vibrant economy), but they want them to do so without causing massive amounts of harm and damage. Global Citizens have to be the people who rein in the damage caused by far too many multinational corporations, and put them on the path towards achieving their profits through ethical and sustainable activities.

The best tool to achieve this lofty aim is called Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). People who engage in SRI invest their money only in those companies which meet rigorous ethical standards. Numerous mutual fund companies, such as Calvert Investments, provide their customers with various SRI fund options carefully screened so as to exclude companies which violate ethical standards in terms of environmentalism, human rights, violence, or other matters. SRI is a means of reprogramming the robots that are multinational corporations, so that they pursue profitability without inflicting harm.

If a person invests in a company that manufactures parts for cluster bombs, they are partly responsible for the deaths of the children killed by those weapons. If a person invests in a company that dumps toxic waste into rivers, they are partly responsible for the environment damage and deaths from illness that will result. If a person invests in a company that does business in Sudan, they are partly responsible for the genocide in Darfur.

Global Citizens want a strong global economy and are as eager as anyone else to invest their money in profitable ventures. But in doing so, we must be guided by what is best for the world as well as what is best for our pocketbooks. Socially Responsible Investing is certainly the way to go.

The World Needs a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly

One of the main objections to the United Nations is its aptly-named "democratic deficit". The delegates the various countries of the world send to the United Nations are not elected directly by the people, but are selected by the governments themselves and cannot act independently of them. This certainly raises questions of credibility regarding delegates from autocratic states such as China and many Arab nations. But even the delegates from democratic nations are suspect, because they represent the agenda of the whichever political party is dominant at any given time, rather than the genuine wishes of the citizens of their country.

This problem could be addressed by the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, composed of delegates elected directly by the people rather than chosen by the individual governments. This would create a direct link between the United Nations and the citizens of the world it is supposed to represent. Implementing such an assembly would be the most fundamental reform ever enacted in the United Nations, and would mark a seminal moment in human history.

Assuming that all countries except the smallest will have multiple-member delegations to the proposed UNPA, we can expect that national delegations will be represented by more than one political party. We could see an American delegation that included both Republicans and Democrats, a British delegation that included Labour, Conservatives, and Liberal Democrats (and perhaps even Scottish Nationalists), and so forth. This injection of varying political persuasions would do much to strengthen and democratize the United Nations as a whole, shaking up its deliberations and raising its profile with the citizens of the world.

Elections to the UNPA would have to be democratic, free and fair in order for the organization to have any credibility. Sham elections in places like Egypt, Iran, or China could simply not be tolerated. Therefore, it is imperative that the United Nations and independent observers oversee the elections to the UNPA in a completely unfettered environment. If any nation declines to accept this, then they should not be permitted to send delegation to the UNPA. Such close U.N. supervision of elections would have the added benefit of strengthening democratic institutions in emerging democracies, as citizens would gain greater experience in conducting free and fair elections.

The creation of a UNPA would also present an opportunity to resolve another common and deserved criticism of the General Assembly: the fact that all countries have a single vote, regardless of population. Currently, we can see the absurd spectacle of little Monaco (population 30,000) having the same voting power in the General Assembly as China (population 1.3 billion). Clearly, the number of voting UNPA delegates per nation would have to take population into account.

But if we followed a path of exact proportional representation by population, another problem immediately presents itself, in that the larger nations would simply overwhelm the smaller nations by sheer force of numbers. Indeed, two nations, India and China, would control more than one-third of the seats by themselves. Clearly, exact proportional representation will not work.

The problem here is very similar to that faced by the 55 men who wrote the United States Constitution. The small states obviously wanted each state to have an equal say in the legislative functions of the government, while the larger states wanted voting power to be based on population. To solve this, the Constitutional Convention adopted the famous Connecticut Compromise, creating a Senate in which the states had equality and a House of Representatives in which votes were determined by population. Clearly, to create a UNPA, we need to find an equally brilliant compromise.

Joseph Schwartzberg, a professor at the University of Minnesota and a strong proponent of the UNPA, has created an electoral matrix that attempts to properly balance the need to give more populous nations greater representation, while avoiding the danger of having the biggest nations completely swamp the smaller ones. It uses such factors as population and financial contribution to the U.N. budget to calcuate the number of seats each nation should have. Even the smallest state would have at least one seat, while the larger nations of India, China and the United States would have around fifty or sixty seats. While not a perfect electoral system, it could be the framework of an eventual compromise.

Beyond all these questions, of course, is the basic question of exactly what the purpose of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly would be. Initially, it would likely serve as merely as a consultative counterpart to the General Assembly itself, until the electoral system had been properly ironed out. Within a few years, however, the UNPA should begin to take on duties beyond merely giving advice. The UNPA, being directly accountable to the people, could credibly take on jobs such as selecting the U.N. General Secretary and exercising proper oversight of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Eventually, the UNPA and the General Assembly might effectively evolve into a bicameral legislature, with the UNPA representing the people and the General Assembly representing the nations.

Over decades, the democratic credibility of the UNPA as a manifestation of the sovereign will of the people could allow it to evolve into a genuine world parliament, with the ability to pass binding legislation on such matters as shall be delegated to it. An age of global problems requires a global approach to solving them, and a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly would seem to be a necessary step in that direction.

Liu Xiaobo Fully Deserves Nobel Peace Prize

Yesterday's announcement that jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was electrifying. As Mr. Xiaobo is one of the most prominent campaigners for human rights in China, the Nobel Committee had a fully justified choice in giving him the award, as the world needs to focus on the political liberalization of China now more than ever.

An academic by training, Mr. Xiaobo has been at the forefront of the movement for Chinese democracy since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Because of his activism, he has repeatedly be arrested and imprisoned by the Chinese state authorities. In 2008, he was one of the major authors of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for a comprehensive reform of the Chinese governmental system, including freedom of expression and religion, an independent judiciary, and legislative democracy. Not long after Manifesto 08 was issued, Mr. Xiaobo was again arrested and, in fact, is currently in prison.

The rise of China will be one of the most important stories of the 21st Century, and the potential power of the ancient nation, in both economic and military terms, is immense. While China has cast off its communist past as far as its economic development is concerned, the Chinese Communist Party retains its political power with an iron fist, ruthlessly crushing all internal opposition. Indeed, it's not surprising that the Chinese government has denounced the Nobel Committee for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to one of its citizens, and has even blocked internet searches on the subject.

The entire world should look to Mr. Xiaobo and the Chinese democratic movement he represents as one of the great hopes for the future. For a variety of reasons, the world has turned a deaf ear to the Chinese democracy movement since the Tiananmen Square protests were crushed twenty-one years ago. Mr. Xiaobo receiving the Nobel Peace Prize is a hopeful sign that this is beginning to change. In the coming years, the world needs to focus on the political liberalization of China in the same way that it focused on the end of apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s.

Congratualtions to Mr. Xiaobo for his deserved achievement, and let's hope it's a sign of things to come.

United States Should Sign Mine Ban Treaty

The amelioration of human suffering is a sacred principle for all Global Citizens, and one cause of great human suffering in our age has been the deployment of massive numbers of antipersonnel landmines during conflicts in Africa, Asia, the Balkans, and Latin America during the 1980s. These devices are specifically designed to maim rather than kill, the sickening logic being that it requires an enemy to expend more resources caring for a badly-wounded soldier than to dispose of a dead body. Vast swaths of land remain infested with these minefields, usually long after the conflict for which they were deployed had ended.

Every week, hundreds of people are maimed and killed, many laid decades before for use in conflicts long since over. Almost all the people being killed by landmines today are innocent civilians with no connection to any combatant force. A very large proportion of those injured or killed are children.

Adding to the miserable human toll are numerous other costs. Landmine fields often prevent refugees from returning to their homes after the end of a conflict, hindering the economic redevelopment which might prevent a future war. Livestock are often killed by landmines, contributing to poverty and starvation. The long-term negative impacts of the deployment of antipersonnel landmines, both direct and indirect, boggles the imagination.

On December 3, 1997, 122 countries came together in Ottawa and signed a comprehensive treaty banning the production and deployment of antipersonnel landmines. Since then, many nations in Africa and Asia have made great progress in clearing their minefields, returning the land to productive use, and allowing people from war-torn regions to begin to rebuild their lives. The total number of countries that have signed the Ottawa Treaty now stands at 156. The movement to free the world from the scourge of antipersonnel landmines represents one of the most glorious episodes of the last few decades of human history.

But despite innumerable requests, the United States of America has refused to sign the treaty. Indeed, antipersonnel landmines are still being produced in American factories.

The fact that America has not joined the movement to ban antipersonnel landmines should not be tolerated by American citizens. Having an opportunity to alleviate the suffering of humanity, yet not taking it, is a failure on the part of the United States to live up to the Enlightenment values on which the country was founded.

It is high time for the United States to join with the rest of the world, submit its name to the Ottawa Treaty, and join in the effort to rid the world of antipersonnel landmines. All American Global Citizens should contact the White House and contact their Senators. Tell them that the United States should sign the Ottawa Treaty, and should do so immediately.

Microfinance: A Revolution in Foreign Aid?

It has become clear that the prevailing model of foreign aid is not nearly as effective in alleviating global poverty as is desireable. Pushed by celebrities like U2's Bono and high-profile activists like Jeffrey Sachs, the prevailing model often amounts to simply dumping massive amounts of Western money in poverty-stricken countries, and dispatching teams of Western experts to undertake development projects. Despite huge expenditures and decades of work, poverty rates in most of the Third World have barely budged, and some areas have actually gone backwards.


The hearts of those who pursue these policies are certainly in the right place and I have nothing but the highest respect for the hard work these aid workers put in. But facts are facts. Most efforts to alleviate global poverty using the prevailing model are not particularly effective. Many of the proponents declare that the failure has resulted from insufficient funds, and politicians are always calling for doubling foreign aid every time a new budget comes up. But the problem is not so much a lack of resources as a largely flawed approach.


The reasons for the failure of the prevailing foreign aid model are easy enough to see. By making the people of Third World nations dependent on Western money, no matter how well-intentioned its givers may be, a cycle of dependence is created from which it is usually impossible to break out. Individual self-sufficiency is the key to a prosperous society, and this is precisely the aspect most lacking in the prevailing model of foreign aid.


For Global Citizens, tackling the problem of global poverty is clearly a high priority. Not only does our basic humanity demand it, but it also serves pragmatic global interests. Global poverty creates instability, which in turn breeds dangerous extremism that can be taken advantage of by groups like Al Qaeda. Furthermore, the economic development of previously poverty-stricken nations opens the door for mutually-beneficial trading opportunities. But since the prevailing model of foreign aid has largely been a failure, what can be done?


The answer may lie in a relatively new concept for global poverty reduction: microfinance. This new approach to poverty reduction in the developing world has been pioneered over the last few decades by Muhammed Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank and the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.


The idea behind microfinance is quite simple. Very small loans are made to people living in poverty, who use the loans to start small business enterprises. These people would obviously be ignored by conventional banks and are thus unable to gain access to financial capital, or would otherwise be taken advantage of by loan sharks and driven even deeper into poverty. By gaining access to the microfinance loans, these people are slowly able to build up their own self-sufficiency, all the while paying back the loan with the profits made from their small start-up businesses. Eventually, the loan will be paid back, and the person will have pulled themselves up from poverty into a position where they can stand on their own feet.


The genius behind microfinance is that it does not trap the person in a cycle of dependency, and lets loose the natural human impulse for self-improvement. This is not a case of some governmental or organizational bureaucracy micro-managing things, but of an individual gaining control of their own destiny. Between being forced to take a handout or having the opportunity for improve one's situation using one's own abilities, all people with the spark of humanity inside them will take the latter every time.


Western donor nations would do well to shift a large proportion of their foreign aid budgets away from projects using the prevailing model and instead turn their focus more to microfinance efforts along the lines laid down by Muhammed Yunis. If demonstrable successes can be achieved, an entirely new approach to reducing and eventuy eliminating global poverty could be formulated.
Below is a video about Grameen Foundation USA, the leading microfinance organization in the United States. It provides an excellent overview of microfinance in general.

Is ITER the Answer to Our Energy Problems?

Two months ago, representatives from the European Union, the United States, Russia, Japan, India, China and South Korea met in France to discuss the future of the ITER project, a massive experiment based in southern France to determine whether a commercial nuclear fusion reactor is technologically and economically feasible. At this meeting, despite the severe budget pressures caused by the present global economic situation, it was determined to allocate the necessary funds to allow the project to go forward.

Discussions on launching the ITER project began all the way back in 1985, but it was only in 2005 that a location was selected and it wasn't until 2007 that serious work on the project began. Recently, concerns have been raised about whether the participants will live up to their responsibilities in terms of funding, but the recent meeting seems to have laid these concerns to rest, at least for the moment.

ITER stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. Incidentally, it also means "the way" in Latin. If the project is successful, it could open the door for commercial fusion power by the middle of the century, thereby ending humanity's reliance on fossil fuels and potentially solving the vast majority of the world's environmental problems at a stroke.

The process of nuclear fusion is simple. Indeed, it is the same process that powers the Sun. By bringing isotopes of hydrogen together and causing them to fuse, a tiny amount of matter is converted into an enormous amount of energy. If harnessed, this energy can be used in precisely the same manner as in any other power plant, driving steam turbines to produce electricity.

The advantages of nuclear fusion are mind-boggling. Unlike fossil fuel power plants, there would be no production whatsoever of greenhouse gases. Unlike fission nuclear reactors, there would be no possibility of any form of Chernobyl-style meltdown and there could be no production of any material which could be used to make nuclear weapons. While the fusion reaction itself produces no radioactive waste, parts of the reactor wall would gradually become mildly radioactive over time, but this is a matter of little concern, as the amounts of radioactive material would be minuscule and they would have a half-life of less than a century.

Perhaps the greatest advantage to nuclear fusion is the fact that the fuel is readily available in enormous quantities all over the world. The most convenient fusion reaction would be combining hydrogen isotopes of deuterium and tritium in a fusion reactor. Deuterium can be obtained by ocean water, while tritium can be produced in the reactor itself. In other words, the fuel for our potential nuclear fusion reactors is as cheap as we could possibly hope for it to be.

Considering the advantages of nuclear fusion, it's easy to wonder why we haven't built large numbers of fusion reactors all across the world already. The answer is that the engineering challenges to achieve economical fusion (in which more power is generated than is required to keep the reaction going) are immense. Not only that, but they are enormously expensive. Until we master the technology and devise effective techniques, nuclear fusion will remain a dream.

That's what the ITER project is all about. The seven partners in the project will share the cost, estimated at tens of billions of dollars, in order to build and operate an experimental reactor that will be used to design and develop the necessary technology and techniques over two decades or more. Assuming it is successful, it could serve as a prototype for genuine commercial nuclear fusion reactors that could be operating throughout the world by the middle of the century.

The project is enormously expensive, but not nearly so expensive as the International Space Station (which, unlike ITER, has no specific object or goal in mind). Considering the potential payoff of commercially feasible fusion power, the investment is certainly worth the risk. While it would be foolish to imagine fusion as some sort of silver bullet that will solve all the world's energy problems instantaneously, it certainly has the long-term potential to be an enormously important part of the world's energy matrix in decades to come. But it will only work if we start now.

Below is a brief documentary, in two parts, produced by the European Union to give a general background of nuclear fusion power in general and the ITER project in particular. Keep in mind that it was created in 2005, and a great deal has happened since then.