What the United Nations independent investigator on extrajudicial killings would like is for countries that employ surprise drone attacks to first prove they have attempted to capture or incapacitate suspects. The investigator, Philip Alston, issued a 29-page report Wednesday that the New York Times termed “Highly Critical” of such attacks by the U.S. and, says the Associated Press, “called on countries to lay out rules and safeguards for carrying out the strikes.” By going after terrorist networks, Alston warned, the U.S. example “could quickly lead to a situation in which dozens of countries carry out ‘competing drone attacks’ outside their borders against people ‘labeled as terrorists by one group or another,’” Charlie Savage reported for the Times. “I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe,” Alston is quoted as saying. “This expansive and open-ended interpretation of the right to self-defense goes a long way towards destroying the prohibition on the use of armed force contained in the U.N. Charter,” Alston pointed out.

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There is a real rogue nation in the world, with at least one nuclear weapon in its possession, but it is not Iran, it is North Korea. It is unclear if the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea was actually successful in their nuclear tests or if they had what is called a “fizzle problem” (which is where the bomb explodes but fails to achieve the prompt criticality that makes weapons of this type so devastating). In any case they have been acting as though they have a weapon which they could deploy against their nearest neighbors for more than a year.

This might be marginally tolerable if it did not seem that the North Korean government was not intent on stirring up further trouble. In March of this year a South Korean corvette, the Cheonan sunk in waters just outside the boundaries claimed by the North. The immediate suspicion that this ship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo have been confirmed.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

The South Korean government did not jump to conclusions in making this assertion. They went to the time and expense to raise the ship on which 46 sailors where killed and subject it to an intense study. With the help of the United States, Canada, Australia, Brittan and Sweden they determined that the only possible cause for the explosion and sinking was an attack by a heavy torpedo.

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Check out Danielle Nierenberg's Op-Ed, based on research for the Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet project, featured on the front page of the Zambia Daily Mail. Cross posted from Border Jumpers, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack.

In the United States, it seems like we only hear about what’s going wrong in Africa. We see and read stories about famine, HIV/AIDS, disease, or conflict.

In fact, few Americans will ever step foot in countries like Malawi or Zambia, largely because our media often scares people away.

As I travel across Africa, working as a senior researcher for the Worldwatch Institute as co-project director of Nourishing the Planet, I am hoping to show a different side of the continent.

Instead of stories of despair, we are looking at and sharing stories of success and hope, highlighting African-led innovations that are helping to alleviate hunger and poverty in an environmentally sustainable way.

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This is the second in a two-part series about my visit with Jan Nijhoff, who works with the Common Market for Eastern and South Africa (COMESA) and Michigan State University in Lusaka, Zambia. Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.

According to Jan Nijhoff, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) “was born” as a result of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—the list of broad targets that the United Nations hopes developing nations will achieve by 2015. Nijhoff, who coordinates a project between Michigan State University and countries in eastern and southern Africa to promote regional trade, says CAADP was a response by COMESA (the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) to develop a program to “solve” the problems outlined in the MDGs.

The initiative is focused especially on MDG #1, the goal of halving both the number of people who earn less than a dollar a day and the number of hungry people worldwide by 2015.

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(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

Killing puts abortion foes on defense
In worship he found his cause
In prayer he found his score
In murder he found his god

Obama hopeful on Mid-East peace
How simple it must sound
This wistful wishful flight among the fragile beams
Of stone and foul hatred.

Search Is On for Wreckage of Missing Air France Jet
Among protea, cycads, and pincushions and the stunning breath of petals
They surely float. The jagged Drakensberg Peaks, like broken teeth
Shimmering edges, dark lines, not bones, but fractured meadows.

Judge: Release Gitmo Docs
We say we’d die for our beloved country,
We proudly wave her colors and cry
At the thought of promised freedom,
Say we’d descend into the grave of valor-
But what of our torture?

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