One day, these animals will save you from anthrax

by | Apr 24, 2009 | Conflict and security, Off topic

No, really:

Llama blood may one day be able to help soldiers, scientists and city officials set up an early-warning system against the tiniest weapons of terror–biological agents like anthrax and smallpox. Authorities have long worried that, were these diseases to get loose, it would be difficult to know anything was wrong until innocent people started dying. Llama blood might provide a better detection method.

How? Antibodies, the tiny molecules that float around in the bloodstreams of people and almost all animals. Antibodies keep a sort of “memory” of all the diseases, allergens and other foreign invaders your body has come into contact with. If the same infiltrator shows up again, the antibodies can match it up with their stored records and immediately know how to fight it.

For a while now, scientists have used genetically altered antibodies to help ID and treat specific diseases. But these techniques always ran into a common problem: Antibodies were just too delicate to be of much use outside a lab or hospital setting. Enter the llama.

According to news stories about the research, llamas have extraordinarily tough and hardy antibodies, capable of sustaining exposure to temperatures as high as 200 degrees F. This discovery gave the researchers the idea to develop sensors, based on llama antibodies, that could be distributed to soldiers in a war, or around cities back home. Modified to be specifically on the lookout for likely-to-be-weaponized diseases, these sensors could pick up signs of a biochemical attack before victims started arriving at the hospital.

Hat tip: Boing Boing (and for the photo, Animals Who Need Big Kisses, which is weird).

Rock of Steel!

by | Apr 24, 2009 | Africa, Conflict and security

Some good news from the UN in the DR Congo:

The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) said today that most of the objectives of its joint military operation with the Congolese Armed Forces against armed groups in the north-east of the vast country have been achieved.

The operation, launched earlier this month and code-named “Rock of Steel” is intended to neutralize the remaining forces of the Front for Patriotic Resistance of Ituri, known under its French acronym FPRI, and other illegal armed groups in the area.

Hold it, hold it: the UN is running operations with names like “Rock of Steel”? Now that’s what I call robust peacekeeping.  But where on earth did they get that name from?  A quick google suggests only one option: “Lady in a Rock n’Roll Hell”, from Warlock’s 1990 “Triumph and Agony” album:

I need a man
A rock of steel
No ‘blue jean baby’ at my chariot wheel
I need a man of action
Ready to set me free

Peacekeeping rocks!

Durban II: not awful but pointless?

by | Apr 24, 2009 | Africa, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia

Further to David’s post on right-wing reactions to the UN’s “Durban II” conference on racism, what’s the real verdict on the last week’s diplomacy in Geneva?  In fairness, things look a lot better than they did on Monday, when Ahmadinejad vented his spleen.  By Tuesday, everyone had calmed down, and the conference agreed an outcome document that (i) doesn’t say anything awful about Israel (although it endorses earlier anti-Israeli stuff) and (ii) says next to nothing about limiting freedom of speech in the name of religion, the other sore-point.

So, Durban II was a success?  Maybe, maybe not.  If you define success as “not a catastrophe”, OK.  If you define it as “actually contributing to the fight against racism”, I’m not sure.  Here’s a rather good summary from an African perspective, from Kenya’s Daily Nation:

Generally, the delegates agreed that racism has often led to war, but there was no mention of the problems faced, for example, by the people of Darfur in Sudan, where thousands have lost their lives as a result of racial discrimination. Nor was there any mention of the relatively more recent events in Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe, where lives were lost because of xenophobia and intolerance.

Meanwhile, South African Foreign Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma only made a passing remark about the xenophobic attacks that took place in her country last year. She did not say what her country had done to make sure such incidents never occurred again and whether the relatives of those affected had received any compensation, or even an apology.

It is notable that while delegates said little about the suffering in different parts of Africa as a result of discrimination and intolerance and kept congratulating each other on the “tremendous progress” made towards the elimination of racism since Durban I, they made no mention whatsoever of the progress made in the United States, where, for the first time ever, a black man, Barack Obama, was elected president in November last year.

In essence, Durban II got to a deal by avoiding the hard stuff. Perhaps that’s what diplomacy is all about. But it would be a mistake to indulge in “I think we got away with it”-style self-congratulation (although Geneva’s diplomatic community deserves a few stiff drinks over the next few days). I stand by an analysis of the conference – and the EU’s rather daft internal debate over whether to participate or not – that Franziska Brantner and I published on Tuesday:

Longer-term, “Durban II” is significant for three reasons. First, it shows that while the arrival of the Obama administration makes multilateral co-operation easier, it cannot erase all the ideological differences that bedevil the UN. Obama’s recent emphasis on outreach to the Muslim world did not defuse all the tensions over rights and religion in Geneva.

Second, it is a reminder that most governments do not fear that a fight over human rights will do any real damage to their relations with the US, let alone Europe. Hillary Clinton has stated that human rights cannot derail co-operation with China; it is unlikely that officials in Beijing are worrying about how Durban affects their relations with Poland.

Finally, these events prove that if the EU wants influence at the UN, it needs a clearer strategy for winning over countries that typically vote against it. Arguing over whether to attend an international summit is not exactly the same as setting the agenda.