The BBC reports that French forces in Lebanon claim they almost fired on Israeli planes:

French troops serving in Lebanon have been only seconds away from firing on Israeli aircraft, the French defence minister says.

Michele Alliot-Marie told parliament the jets dived towards UN positions in October and were perceived as a threat.

"Two seconds later there would have been a shot against the aircraft which were directly menacing our forces," the defence minister said.

Uh huh. Sure. Whatever you say, Michèle.

I'll go out on a limb here and make a prediction: French forces in Lebanon will never attack Israeli aircraft.

You see, unlike Greenpeace boats, Israeli warplanes fire back.

NOTE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And thanks for linking, Prof. Reynolds.

United Press International reports on a story I first read in a hard copy of the Financial Times on the flight back from Thailand:

Up to about a third of the $590 million U.N. fund spent for the Indian Ocean tsunami relief may have gone to pay for overhead.

The Financial Times says its two-month investigation showed the money appears to have been spent on administration, staff and related costs. The $590 million was part of the United Nation's $1.1 billion disaster flash appeal.

The newspaper also found several U.N. agencies continue to refuse to disclose details of their relief expenditure in spite of earlier pledges of transparency by senior officials.

The FT says that charities and relief organizations usually spend no more than 10% of donations on overhead. The U.N. tripled that.

No wonder it was so concerned that America and other nations might be "stingy" with donations — any less, and the refugees might not have received any aid at all.

It looks like the looming Internet-control showdown that I blogged about here and here has been averted.

Instapundit links to an Associated Press report from Tunisia, site of this week's World Summit on the Information Society:

Negotiators from more than 100 countries agreed late Tuesday to leave the United States in charge of the Internet's addressing system, averting a U.S.-EU showdown at this week's U.N. technology summit.

U.S. officials said early Wednesday that instead of transferring management of the system to an international body such as the United Nations, an international forum would be created to address concerns. The forum, however, would have no binding authority.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael Gallagher said the deal means the United States will leave day-to-day management to the private sector, through a quasi-independent organization called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

Nice. I'd like to know how sentiment shifted so suddenly in America's favor, though. Perhaps summit host Tunisia's thuggish attacks on reporters and TV crews reminded the delegates of the importance of free and open information.

I've criticized the United Nations a lot, so it's only fair that I point out when it does something right.

The UN has compiled a decades-long track record of anti-Israel resolutions and summits that many have seen as anti-Semitic — including the 1975 equation of Zionism with racism, the irredeemably biased 2001 Durban UN World Conference against Racism, and the attempt in 2003 to block Israel's construction of a wall to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers.

But a new UN resolution happily bucks that sorry trend. The Associated Press reports:

The U.N. General Assembly adopted a landmark resolution Tuesday that will create the first international day of commemoration for the six million Jews and other victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

The International Day of Commemoration will be held every year on Jan. 27.

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman thanked the 191 members of the General Assembly "at this unique and historic moment ... for adopting this unprecedented resolution."

Nice job. And there's more good news. We recently had a debate here at Riding Sun about whether the international community would soon forget Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's calling Israel a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map". Well, it may eventually forget, but for now, it still remembers. Again, from an Associated Press story:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has canceled a trip to Iran in response to increasing tension over the Iranian president's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

Annan decided it is "not an appropriate time" for him to go to Iran, citing the "ongoing controversy" over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks last week, according to a statement from the secretary-general's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.

There will be those who call Kofi's action an ineffectual gesture, but what is the man supposed to do — send in the tanks? He's a diplomat, and cancelling his special trip to meet your country's president is the diplomatic equivalent of a tactical nuke. Does this solve the problem of Iran? No. Is it nice to see anyway? Yes. Once again, nice job.

And for a brief reminder of why we need a Holocaust remembrance day, and why Jews are so touchy about threats to wipe them off the map, I strongly recommend this powerful story by LA Times reporter Sandy Banks: Saved by a Saint in a Tank. I couldn't make it through the whole thing without tearing up.

Back in February, I blogged about how the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri inspired some people to blame Israel, despite widespread belief that Syria was responsible.

Now, a United Nations investigative report has confirmed what almost everyone already knew: Syria did it. Via Dartblog, the Associated Press reports:

The United Nations' exhaustive report linked the brother and brother-in-law of Syria's president to the February 14 car bomb that killed Hariri and 20 others, and said Lebanese intelligence officials helped organize it.

The report stopped short of fingering Syrian President Bashar Assad or his inner circle. But it accused the regime of failing to cooperate in the inquiry. The report also alleged Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa lied in a letter to the investigating commission.

So, that settles that, right? Not exactly. Because the UN never meant to send out the report in that form. The Telegraph reports:

The United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.

The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.

The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.

That's right, folks. The computer wizards at the UN left on "Track Changes" in Microsoft Word.

The instinctive reflex found in much of the Arab world to blame anything bad on Israel undoubtedly has its roots in the region's virulent anti-Semitism. But it's reinforced by by the United Nations, which entertains endless resolutions against Israel, yet tries to obscure the truth about Arab crimes.

I blogged earlier today about the Ig Nobel prizes, which, in a parody of the Nobel prizes, are designed to "honor" dubious achievements. But there is little need for the Ig Nobels if the Nobel Prizes become a parody of themselves.

While the hard science prizes may be on firm ground, the Peace Prize has sunk into a mire of bitter irony. Some would say its decline began years ago, when it went to that great champion of nonviolence, Yasser Arafat. But while Arafat ultimately remained a corrupt, dissembling terrorist to the end of his days, he had at least, in the Oslo Accords helped achieve a seeming breakthrough in Palestinian relations with Israel. Of course, Arafat would soon violate the accords, but the Nobel judges can almost be forgiven for credulously believing that a dyed-in-the-wool killer like Arafat would change his ways.

The latest Peace Prize laureate, Mohamed ElBaradei (and the International Atomic Energy Agency), is not a bloodthirsty kleptocrat like Arafat. But ElBaradei can't even point to the slender accomplishment of a stillborn diplomatic agreement.

As the head of the UN group foucused on monitoring and curtailing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, ElBaradei has made no tangible difference to the plans of nations like North Korea and Iran, who are suspected to be producing or pursuing the development of nuclear weapons.

The Telegraph rightly says that ElBaradei's prize "rewards failure":

The joint award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its Egyptian director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, is a classic case of wishful thinking.

...In 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and is being enticed back not by the agency, but by a six-nation group under Chinese chairmanship. With Iran, mediation has fallen to the European Union troika of Britain, France and Germany.

The agency has given repeated warnings to Teheran about its nuclear ambitions, but has still to summon up the courage to refer the matter to the Security Council. Last May, the NPT review conference resulted in impasse, and last month the UN General Assembly had nothing to say about non-proliferation and disarmament.

In no other Nobel category could the prize go to someone who accomplished precisely nothing. You can't win for Physics just because you tried — really, really hard, mind you — to achieve cold fusion. Even Literature laureates have to write something. But for the Nobel Peace Prize, it now seems, all that's necessary is for your heart to be in the right place.

Recently, I blogged about other nations trying to take control of the Internet's root servers away from the U.S.

What's darkly amusing about this whole sorry episode is the naked hypocrisy underlying the movement. Its backers include countries (like China, Cuba, and Iran) that would undeniably like to have greater control over what their citizens can read and post online. Yet in this recent Guardian story (via LGF) UN special adviser on Internet governance Nitin Desai says:

There is clearly an acceptance here that governments are not concerned with the technical and operational management of the internet. Standards are set by the users.

...The really important point is that the EU doesn't want to see this change as bringing new government control over the internet. Governments will only be involved where they need to be and only on issues setting the top-level framework.

Give me a break. The only reason why governments could possibly want to strip the U.S. of control is because they are concerned with the technical and operational management of the Internet. (Which, by common convention, is written with a capital "I". The Guardian doesn't capitalize it, perhaps to subtly suggest that it's not a particular system, but a common resource.) [UPDATE: Capitalization of "Internet" is a matter of debate. See below.]

The Guardian article continues on, reaching a conclusion that frankly left me baffled:

A number of countries represented in Geneva, including Brazil, China, Cuba, Iran and several African states, insisted the US give up control, but it refused. The meeting "was going nowhere", Hendon says, and so the EU took a bold step and proposed two stark changes: a new forum that would decide public policy, and a "cooperation model" comprising governments that would be in overall charge.

Much to the distress of the US, the idea proved popular. Its representative hit back, stating that it "can't in any way allow any changes" that went against the "historic role" of the US in controlling the top level of the internet.

But the refusal to budge only strengthened opposition, and now the world's governments are expected to agree a deal to award themselves ultimate control. It will be officially raised at a UN summit of world leaders next month and, faced with international consensus, there is little the US government can do but acquiesce.

Come again? Maybe I'm not tech-savvy enough to understand the intracacies of how this whole Internet root server thing works (and readers are invited to enlighten me in the comments), but it seems to me there are only a few possibilities here:

(1) The U.S. retains control of the root servers. Things go on pretty much as they have before.

(2) Other countries, refusing to accept U.S. control, set up servers of their own, essentially fracturing the Internet into two or more separate networks.

Option (2) would mean the end of universal resolvability — having the same URL lead to the same website, anywhere in the world — essentially destroying the Internet as a means of worldwide communication. Under this scenario, everyone loses — except, of course, for totalitarian regimes that care more about social control than access to information.

(3) ...and that's it. There is no three. There is no scenario in which the U.S. yields to other nation's demands for control of the technology it invented. Even if it came to a vote in the U.N., we'd just veto it.

So, what am I missing here? How could the U.S. be forced to give up control?

FOLLOW-UP:
LGF commenter nonic says I'm basically right, but that option (2) is a lot worse than I described it:

...European, Middle Eastern, Asian, and African countries could control the internet/www in their own countries by setting up a PARALLEL internet/www and making access to the US-controlled version either impossible or illegal for their people. They do not have to seize the US-controlled internet/www (hardware or transmission systems), only isolate it.

When they say we could do nothing but “acquiesce,” they are probably right. What else could we do? Forbid other countries from setting up their own systems?

If, or probably WHEN they do this, it seems to me there will be three major effects:

(1) For Americans and others (perhaps Australians and Israelis, for example, maybe Japanese) who continue to use the US-controlled version, there will be inconvenience and barrier to communication because many sites we’re used to using will become unavailable. But this would be nothing compared to other effects.

(2) For business and industry (especially the financial industries), there will be a HUGE set-back in how they can operate, particularly if they are forced to choose between the two systems. This could (I think) even lead to another world-wide economic depression. And how long would American, Australian, Israeli, and Japanese businesses (and governments) be willing to hold out under that kind of threat?

(3) For the average man or woman at the keyboard in EU / UN controlled countries, for freedom-hungry people in Middle Eastern and Asian countries, the “War on Information” will be over, and they will have lost.

A global standards battle. Great.

ANOTHER FOLLOW-UP:
Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin not only misreports this story as a done deal with the U.S. ceding control ("USA to give up root control of internet"), but seems downright happy about it — until she's forced to concede that some of the nations involved are even worse than the big, bad USA:

Troubled negotiations in Geneva have yielded an unprecedented result: the US may have to give up control of the internet to a coalition of governments. That sounds great, right? OK, well — some of those governments are countries like China, Iran, and Syria, who have horrible human rights records and would be expected to impose greater government control. Freedom to wiretap, censor, and firewall? Eh, not so great — not that the US doesn't have experience with those activities, or an increasingly troublesome human rights record of its own.

America: Almost, but not quite so bad as the world's worst dictatorships.

YET ANOTHER FOLLOW-UP:
That Boing Boing link above does point to a good analysis of the situation from CNET news.

AND ONE MORE FOLLOW-UP:
Mutantfrog points out that whether to capitalize "Internet" is a matter of debate, with various major publications either capitalizing it or not. In the Guardian's case, I imagine a preference for considering the Internet a worldwide communal resource influenced its decision.

On Yahoo News, this Associated Press story is headlined:

U.S. Insists on Keeping Control of Web

But who's really doing the insisting here? Given that America has control of the Internet because we created it in the first place, the following headline would be more appropriate:

Other Countries Insist on Taking Control of Web

FOLLOW-UP
Meryl Yourish and Jay Tea don't think having the U.N. run the Internet is such a good idea.

Rediff.com reports that, according to the Sankei Shimbun, Japan is giving up on its bid to gain a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council:

Japan will give up its bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for the time being since it had failed to win enough support from the international community, a Japanese newspaper reported on Sunday.

However, a spokesman for the prime minister said he was unaware of any such decision.

Japan, Brazil, Germany and India, the Group of 4, proposed the expanding the council to 25 seats, adding 6 permanent seats without veto power.

The 4 countries hoped to get permanent seats, with the two remaining seats reserved for Africa. They had proposed the addition of 4 non-permanent seats, including one for Africa.

But the Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported on Sunday that Japan will soon hold talks with the three other countries to confirm that they are giving up their group of 4 bid. The report did not cite sources.

If true, this hardly comes as a surprise. A lack of robust support from other nations certainly didn't help matters, but, as I've noted before, Japan's hopes were unrealistic so long as a hostile China could veto its bid.

FOLLOW-UP:
More reports here and here.

Reuters reports on Japan's desperate last-ditch bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council — which, given that it would require China's approval, seems exceedingly unlikely:

Japan's relations with China have been strained by a series of disputes and its U.N. bid was among the factors that triggered violent anti-Japanese protests in Chinese cities in April.

"This is a difficult proposal... It is hard to tell until the final stage," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters on Friday, when asked about the prospects for the G4 proposal.

Failure could spark annoyance with Washington and anger at China among Japanese lawmakers, already irked by Beijing's criticism of Koizumi's visits to a Tokyo shrine for war dead where convicted war criminals are also honoured.

It would also cause deep embarrassment, especially if it highlighted a lack of Asian support for the Japanese bid.

I would never tell Japan that it should follow China's orders. But when you really, really want a favor from someone — particularly someone who doesn't like you — it pays to be nice.

True, China's posture toward Japan has been particularly aggressive and arrogant over the past several months. But Japan has done nothing to curry favor with China, either.

It issued a new government-authorized history textbook skimming over Japanese WWII-era atrocities at Nanking.

It fought over the status of the Okinotori outcroppings, which Japan says are actual islands extending its territorial waters, and which China says are just a bunch of rocks.

It fought over ownership of the Senkaku Islands and the natural gas resources in the ocean floor around them. China calls them the Diaoyu Islands, and claims them for itself.

And, of course, it refused to give an inch on the contentious matter of Prime Minister Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine.

Again, I don't think Japan should necessarily defer to China on the above issues, or, for that matter, on any others. But nor should it be surprised when China vetoes its bid.

Master satirist Scott Ott at Scrappleface finds a way to unite the world against terrorism:

Although the United Nations lacks a consensus definition of "terrorism" and has no substantive anti-terror program, Secretary-General Kofi Annan today said that yesterday's bombings in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt, that killed more than 85 people, may violate the Kyoto protocols on climate change.

"The global concept of terrorism is hazy and subjective," said Mr. Annan, "but almost everyone agrees that blowing such a quantity of smoke, debris and blood-borne pathogens into our atmosphere is an unmitigated evil."

The Secretary-General called for the U.N. Security Council to issue "a stern resolution against this egregious pollution of Mother Earth, even if the justification for the bombings is debatable among civilized people."

"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," Mr. Annan said. "But the horrifying consequences of unregulated emissions is a crisis that transcends culture and ideology, and demands immediate and vigorous action."

Kind of like nailing Al Capone for tax evasion, I guess.

In the wake of his scandal-plagued tenure as UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan seems to be preparing for a second career as a retail magnate:But in fact, Kofi Collect is not Mr. Annan's backup option; it's a women's fashion brand introduced last year by Japanese clothing company Sanei International.

NEW YORK, Dec. 30 (Rooters) — In a prepared speech today, U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland rapped terrorist kingpin Osama Bin Laden for his "stingy" response to the Indian Ocean tsunamis that killed close to 100,000 people earlier this week.

"It is beyond me why Bin Laden is so stingy, really," the Norwegian-born U.N. official told reporters. "The terrible impact of this disaster should remind the son of a wealthy Saudi businessman like Bin Laden of how many people need his help."

Egeland blamed U.S. President George W. Bush for Bin Laden's failure to provide more relief aid. "If Bush hadn't done so much damage to Al Qaeda in the past few years, Bin Laden would have the resources to really make a difference. Hopefully the world will now see just how misguided America's 'War on Terror' really is."

Egeland also lamented the recent passing of Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, who he said "would certainly have donated large sums of money to the needy."