South Africa – along with China and Russia – recently vetoed the US-introduced resolution to place an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and enact travel and financial restrictions on the nation's president, Robert Mugabe, who recently reclaimed his office by killing his opponents. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is very, very angry about this:

But when it comes to pure, rancid moral corruption, no one can top South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, and his stooge at the U.N., Dumisani Kumalo. They have done everything they can to prevent any meaningful U.N. pressure on the Mugabe dictatorship.

As The Times reported, America’s U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, “accused South Africa of protecting the ‘horrible regime in Zimbabwe,’ ” calling this particularly disturbing given that it was precisely international economic sanctions that brought down South Africa’s apartheid government, which had long oppressed that country’s blacks.

So let us now coin the Mbeki Rule: When whites persecute blacks, no amount of U.N. sanctions is too much. And when blacks persecute blacks, any amount of U.N. sanctions is too much.

(emphasis ours)

Real talk!

Not a single one of the sub-Saharan countries in Africa are on course to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon. Kimoon called the lag a "development emergency."

Set in September of 2000, the eight MDGs are as follows: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal free primary education; gender equality and empowerment of women and reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development. The UN had hoped the goals would be met by 2015.

Kimoon says that advances in specific goals in countries like Kenya and Ghana proves rapid achievement is possible, but stresses that increased foreign trade and investment are necessary for Africa's growth. Currently, the entire continent of Africa has a three percent share of the whole world's trading and investment. Unfortunately, poised to unravel the few but remarkable gains made over the last eight years is what Kimoon calls the "alarming" global food shortage, the scourge currently straining the good ol' US of A.

It took an entire UN committee months to reach a conclusion they could have come up with after a couple hours spent with a decent newspaper: blacks and poor people often get left behind by circuitous government bureaucracy in the United States.

A United Nations treaty committee ruled Friday that the United States' response to Hurricane Katrina has had a greater negative impact on displaced black residents and called on the federal government to do more to guarantee that they can return to affordable housing in their hometowns.

The U.N. committee also ruled Friday that the U.S. government must make sure displaced residents have a greater say in plans that affect their return.

New Orleans housing authorities are calling the ruling a victory over the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has for years now been attempting to move forward with a dandified plan to destroy four large projects and replace them with prettier, mixed-income buildings with less units. HUD reps argue that, by demolishing the public housing, they'll also be demolishing the "concentrated poverty" plaguing New Orleans. And they say offering less units than before isn't a problem, because surveys show that most displaced NOLA project residents don't want to return, leaving room for plenty of rich white people.

A report from John Fernandez, a professor of architecture from MIT, says leveling the projects would be an unwise decision, as they are "safer, stronger and cheaper to rehabilitate and bring up to code than building new stick-built units." Fernandez hasn't yet commented on the counterpoint, "But they're unsightly!"

The U.S. got served yesterday in Geneva during day one of the two day meeting held by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. A panel of 18 unpaid members of the committee periodically review the progress of nations, like the U.S., that signed a U.N. pact to eliminate all forms of racism. Ha. Anyway, the panel, led by a Greek lawyer, nailed the U.S. delegation, which hasn't gone before the panel in seven years, on racial profiling.

Linos-Alexander Sicilianos, who led the questioning, said there was overwhelming evidence of police brutality against African-Americans, Arabs and Muslims, Hispanics and other minority groups.

"You need to intensify your efforts at all levels to combat this very alarming phenomenon," Sicilianos, a Greek lawyer on the panel, told the U.S. delegation.

Grace Chung Becker, a U.S. assistant attorney general, told the committee that U.S. law prohibits the use of excessive force by any law enforcement officer against any individual in the United States. The offenders can be punished under criminal law or the victims can bring a civil lawsuit, she said.

Of course! Becker also made sure to add that President Bush said racial profiling is bad. He also frowns upon nooses, in case you didn't know. [AP]