{"id":68,"date":"2005-06-22T07:36:38","date_gmt":"2005-06-22T07:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alephnaught.wordpress.com\/2005\/06\/22\/we-did-nothing\/"},"modified":"2008-10-31T16:07:51","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T23:07:51","slug":"we-did-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/2005\/06\/22\/we-did-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"We Did Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content_div-68\">\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Title: <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguin.ca\/nf\/Book\/BookDisplay\/0,,0_067091424X,00.html\" target=\"NewWindow\">We Did Nothing: Why the Truth Doesn&#8217;t Always Come Out When the UN Goes In<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Author: <\/strong>Linda Polman<\/li>\n<li><strong>Paperback: <\/strong>256 pages<\/li>\n<li><strong>Publisher: <\/strong>Viking Adult (Penguin Books), 29 May 2003<\/li>\n<li><strong>ISBN: <\/strong>067091424X<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Found this book at the English Book Exchange in Florence on vacation &#8211; I had finished the two I&#8217;d brought, was reading a couple of the short books we purchased, and knew I needed something for the flight home (it was between this and a book on the Medicis).<\/p>\n<p>And this is a good one.  The author begins by describing and R&amp;R trip by some of the Somalia &#8220;blue helmets&#8221; (the UN troops all wear blue helmets).  She then proceeds to describe the &#8220;peace keeping&#8221; efforts she observed.  The UN operates in a very strange way &#8211; the member states set the rules for what can and can&#8217;t be done.  Typically, this means that the country being impacted has a big say in the range of options available to the UN troops.  This means that the UN can&#8217;t keep peace, it can barely keep its solders safe.  Its also a wake up call for the United States, which keeps invading countries only to ask the UN to come in and clean up the mess, which it can&#8217;t, and then blame the UN for the mess!<\/p>\n<p>Also interesting &#8211; the author is a Dutch journalist, and amazon.com doesn&#8217;t carry the book, so perhaps I was lucky to find it!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"translate_block\" style=\"display: none;\">\n<hr class=\"translate_hr\" \/>\n<a class=\"translate_translate\" id=\"translate_button_post-68\" lang=\"en\" xml:lang=\"en\" href=\"javascript:show_translate_popup('en', 'post', 68);\"><span>Translate<\/span><\/a><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/google-ajax-translation\/transparent.gif?resize=16%2C16&#038;ssl=1\" id=\"translate_loading_post-68\" class=\"translate_loading colorbox-68\" style=\"display: none;\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"\" \/>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: We Did Nothing: Why the Truth Doesn&#8217;t Always Come Out When the UN Goes In Author: Linda Polman Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Viking Adult (Penguin Books), 29 May 2003 ISBN: 067091424X Found this book at the English Book Exchange in Florence on vacation &#8211; I had finished the two I&#8217;d brought, was reading a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2344,364],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-books","tag-united-nations"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2w3Qj-16","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}