Is This A Franchise?

The UN has announced yet another investigation into yet another series of allegations of sexual abuse of refugees under the protection of UN peacekeepers. The London Telegraph had earlier reported on the systemic abuse of children in Sudan, and Turtle Bay has once again promised a full and open probe, blah, blah, blah:

The United Nations said last night that it was launching an investigation into allegations reported in The Daily Telegraph that its peacekeepers and staff have abused children in southern Sudan. …
The Daily Telegraph yesterday reported allegations of blue berets paying children as young as 12 for sex in the mission in southern Sudan, known as UNMIS. The abuse allegedly began two years ago when the mission moved in to help rebuild the region after a 23-year civil war.
The UN has up to 10,000 military personnel in the region, of all nationalities, and the allegations involve peacekeepers, military police and civilian staff.
The Daily Telegraph has learned of more than 20 victims’ accounts claiming that some peacekeeping and civilian staff based in Juba regularly pick up young children in their UN vehicles and force them to have sex.
It is thought that hundreds may have been abused.

This has been going on since May 2004, when the Independent first reported the systemic sexual abuse of women and children in the UN mission for the Congo. In the 31 months since then, we have seen no effort to end the abuses; instead, we have discovered more and more examples of massive atrocities committed by both the component troops of peacekeeping missions and UN personnel. The UN flag seems to serve as a warning to hide the women and children than for hope of peace and stability.
Where else has this happened? A report from the Washington Post in March 2005 showed that similar abuses occurred on a systemic basis around the world. This was the UN response to this report almost two years ago:

The United Nations is facing new allegations of sexual misconduct by U.N. personnel in Burundi, Haiti, Liberia and elsewhere, which is complicating the organization’s efforts to contain a sexual abuse scandal that has tarnished its Nobel Prize-winning peacekeepers in Congo.
The allegations indicate that a series of measures the United Nations has taken in recent years have failed to eliminate a culture of sexual permissiveness that has plagued its far-flung peacekeeping operations over the last 12 years. But senior U.N. officials say they have signaled their seriousness by imposing new reforms and forcing senior U.N. military commanders and officials to step down if they do not curb such practices.

A report by Refugees International at the time emphasized that the problem existed in every UN mission. The reason was because the UN lacked accountability, transparency, and discipline. The UN promised to start reforming itself immediately at the time.
Here we are, almost two years later, and we see that they have done nothing — and they still have no accountability, transparency, and discipline.
At some point in time, we have to ask ourselves whether we want to remain complict in the UN’s chronic atrocities. After all, our money funds these missions, and that gives us a measure of responsibility for these crimes. If the UN refuses to take any real and effective action to stop these abuses and to ensure that they do not occur again, we should pull our funding for the UN on that basis alone. Let the entire corrupt organization collapse of its own moral rot, and work towards replacing it with an organization that has accountability and discipline built into its operations.

Ban Puts Saddam Death Penalty In Perspective

This change promises a return to common sense at Turtle Bay, and will likely drive Kofi Annan fans up the nearest wall. Newly-inducted UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon defended Iraq’s imposition of the death penalty as a question of sovereignty and reminded protestors around the world about the nature of the man whose death they lament:

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said Tuesday that Iraq and other countries have the right to impose the death penalty, adding that the world should never forget Saddam Hussein’s “heinous crimes.”
Ban’s first public reaction to Hussein’s execution signaled a sharp break from his predecessor, Kofi Annan, an ardent death-penalty critic who opposed U.N. participation in the Iraqi war crimes tribunal that sentenced Hussein to die. Human rights advocates expressed concern that Ban’s comments lend credibility to what they see as a flawed trial of the former Iraqi leader, and complained that he could set back efforts to abolish the death penalty.
The remarks suggest that the former South Korean foreign minister, who began a five- year term on Monday, would defer to the United Nations’ 192 member states on some of the day’s most controversial and unsettled issues. Nearly 70 countries, including the United States and South Korea, retain the death penalty.
“Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against the Iraqi people,” Ban said in his first news conference as secretary general. “The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide.”

I’m no fan of the death penalty, but I am a proponent of national sovereignty over governance through the UN. This statement from Ban suggests that he has the same outlook, and it should serve as a reversal of thought among Turtle Bay power elites. For too long, the UN bureaucracy and leadership have taken for granted the notion that the UN represents some sort of supergovernment rather than a diplomatic venue, and Annan was among the worst at using his position to meddle in sovereign affairs of member states.
Iraq has a representative government elected by its people. If they want to abolish the death penalty, then they will elect representatives who will do so. Right now it appears to be popular among Iraqis, but that may well change after Saddam’s execution. I don’t think anyone believes it was handled properly, and the sectarian triumphalism apparent at the execution may well give some momentum to President Talabani’s opposition to capital punishment in Iraq.
Annan would have taken the opportunity to scold the Iraqis and to tell them how to run their country. Ban quite appropriately has decided that internal Iraqi political decisions, freely chosen by their elected representatives, has no bearing on the UN or its mission. If we’re lucky, this will presage a period of modesty from the United Nations that, given its own track record of corruption and incompetence, is long overdue.
UPDATE: Corrected use of surname, which is Ban and not Moon. Thanks to Jim L for the note.

Another Conviction On UN Corruption

Federal prosecutors have successfully concluded another case of corruption at the United Nations, this time getting a guilty plea from an Indian businessman who coughed up favors in order to garner millions in procurement contracts:

A businessman representing an Indian state-owned company pleaded guilty to bribing a former senior U.N. official with an unspecified amount of cash, a cellphone and a discounted Manhattan apartment in exchange for more than $50 million worth of business contracts, federal authorities announced Thursday.
Michael Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that Nishan Kohli, 30, admitted making the illicit payments to Sanjay Bahel, then a high-ranking U.N. purchasing official, as compensation for steering business to Kohli from 1998 to 2003. Kohli faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. Bahel last month pleaded not guilty to related charges.
Kohli’s attorney, Jacob Laufer, declined to discuss his client’s role in the scheme. But he said Kohli signed an agreement with federal authorities on Thursday to cooperate in their ongoing investigation into corruption at the United Nations. “He has made a mistake, and he’s contrite about it,” he said.

It’s interesting to see that Kohli offered a Manhattan apartment as part of his bribery scheme. Apartments appear to be very popular as unofficial perks at the UN these days.
This isn’t the first time that UN procurement has been under the microscope, either. Alexander Yakovlev appears in the Volcker investigation as a man who used his access to over a billion dollars of contracts to spread wealth and favors to his family and close associates. Yakovlev pled guilty to corruption charges shortly after this became public.
Bahel now has to face his indictment alone. He has been charged with various corruption charges, and with Kohli pleading out, he has to understand that his trial has just become much more difficult. Of course, Bahel may also have information on corruption at the UN that could help alleviate his loneliness. Certainly, the US continues to prove that corruption at Turtle Bay is hardly a solitary pursuit — in fact, it looks like it may be the one unifying theme of the world’s debating society.

Annans Ace Out Low-Income New Yorkers

One runs the United Nations and has a spouse from a wealthy Swedish family. Another serves as the Ghanian ambassador to Morocco and holds gala parties at their residence there of the last several years. Claudia Rosett wonders, then, why brothers Kofi and Kobina Annan have managed to hold onto a Roosevelt Island flat for more than a decade despite its being intended for low-to-middle-income New Yorkers on a list with a four-year waiting period:

As Secretary-General Annan prepares to leave his post at the United Nations, a mystery is surfacing surrounding his apartment on Roosevelt Island, subsidized by New York taxpayers, which is still in use by the family of his brother, Kobina Annan.
The apartment was where Mr. Annan and his wife lived before 1997, when he became secretary-general. The Roosevelt Island home is part of an estate of low-rent state-regulated housing. For years, the Annans saved considerable sums by occupying an apartment meant to help financially strapped low- to moderate-income New York families.
One question Mr. Annan has never addressed is why he and his wife felt comfortable availing themselves of this generous arrangement. Another is how it is that, since Mr. Annan and his wife left that Roosevelt Island apartment 10 years ago to move into the rent-free residence on Sutton Place supplied to the secretary-general, their former low-rent apartment was handed over to be occupied by the family of Mr. Annan’s brother.

For a man who just finished lecturing Americans on his retirement from the position of UN Secretary-General on the need to help the poor and downtrodden, this seems incongruous at the least. The Mitchell-Lama housing has requirements that obviously have not been met by the Annan family, most clearly that the apartment be used as a primary residence by the lessee. Since Kofi has also availed himself of the S-G residence in Sutton Place and has not lived on Roosevelt Island for a decade — and his brother hasn’t lived there for several years — it means that the Annans have forced strapped New Yorkers to wait longer for affordable housing.
And this is no small discount involved in this case, either. The market rate for a Roosevelt Island residence would be around $4500, but the state-subsidized rate paid by the Annans for their second home amounts to less than $2,000 per month. That amounts to a subsidy of $30,000 per year, which certainly would be a boon to low- and middle-income families in New York — but would be wasted on a man who has a free apartment in tony Sutton Place, and certainly wasted on the Ghanian Ambassador to Morocco, neither of which come within two time zones of Roosevelt Island.
Rosett, of course, makes the investigation rather entertaining. She got no cooperation from Kofi, so she decided to let her fingers do the walking through archived New York telephone books. Kofi maintained a listing showing his occupancy of the apartment from 1978 right up to the time when he became Undersecretary General in 1993, the #2 slot at the UN. Of course, in the intervening period, he was working in Geneva for a few years, once again apparently violating the terms of the program. His son Kojo then used the same address and phone number in some correspondence during his featherbed job at Cotecna, a key issue in the Oil-For-Food scandal.
After Kofi rose to the top of the UN, Rosett finds records tying Kobina and his wife Ekua to the apartment, both in telephone books and in business cards. Like any good reporter, she contacted Kobina and Ekua, both of whom confirmed their residence at the Roosevelt Island flat — but then grew much less cooperative when asked about how they managed to secure the lease. Ekua told Rosett that their sons use the apartment now.
It’s a remarkable story of hypocrisy and greed from the man who set himself up over the last week as the global scold for rich nations. Instead of modeling the behavior he demanded of us, he abused the programs we set up to assist the working-class families of New York just so he and his family could maintain a second residence at a discount rate, even while none of them paid no rent for their own primary residences. What a fraud.

Guilty Of Acting In Our Own Interest

Easily one of the most amusing articles of this year appears in today’s Observer regarding a pattern that analysts have discovered in our foreign-aid allocations. It seems that the US allocates more aid to nations when they serve on the UN Security Council for two-year terms than at other times, and the Observer isn’t happy about that at all:

The US uses its aid budget to bribe those countries which have a vote in the United Nations security council, giving them 59 per cent more cash in years when they have a seat, according to research by economists.
Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN Secretary-General, expressed his frustration at the power the US wields over the UN in his parting speech last week. In a detailed analysis of 50 years of data, Harvard University’s Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker provide the clearest evidence yet that money is used by the council’s richest member to grease the wheels of diplomacy.
Anti-poverty campaigners reacted angrily to the findings. ‘Aid should go to the people who need it, not as a political sweetener,’ said Duncan Green of Oxfam. ‘In recent years most rich countries have been making progress on this, but showering bribes on developing countries just because they sit on the UN security council is clearly a step backwards.’
Charities often complain that the US uses its aid as a political tool, and this new evidence of what the authors call ‘vote-buying’ will raise fears about whether the surge of aid money that was promised at last year’s Gleneagles G8 summit will be fairly spent.
Ten of the 15 seats on the security council are filled for two years at a time, by rotation. Kuziemko and Werker found that, in years when they have a seat, countries get an average of more than £8m extra in foreign aid from the US.

Well, what a shock! America acts in its own interest, and we use our foreign aid to advance our foreign policy. It must be the first time that’s ever happened in world history! Or, perhaps, I only imagined the calls from organizations like the Guardian/Observer to withhold aid and trade from places like apartheid South Africa, among others.
People can’t have it both ways. The United Nations has emerged as the preffered method to tie down America in order to control our foreign-policy impulses, a strategy that had been successful of late. The vast majority of that body consists of autocracies and dictatorships whose goals are diametrically opposed to ours, but the US has played along with the UN in order to bolster our standing with allies more enamored with people like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro.
Given all of that, the same people who hold this debauched and corrupt organization as the pinnacle of human government cannot complain when we decided to direct our foreign aid to those Lilliputians who make up part of that effort to tie use down that might be in a position to keep the ties at a minimum. In the first place, the Observer fails to recognize that our foreign aid is our money, and it belongs to the American taxpayer. It should get spent in ways which benefit Americans as well as people abroad, and the outrage of the analysts at that simple truth speaks volumes about their political agenda.
To the larger point, the same people who try to stack the deck against the US at the UN seem particularly incensed that we have decided to respond in kind. The nations that make it to the Security Council play hardball with the US, expecting us to cut deals to garner their support. The Non-Aligned Nations made this into an art form during the Cold War, and extorted both us and the Soviets in that manner. The French explicitly did the same thing when it came time to debate the invasion of Iraq in January and February of 2003, threatening to cut off aid to nations which supported us.
The Observer should spare us the moral outrage. Their analysts apparently expect us to use no discretion in our foreign aid allocations and just allow the UN to run roughshod over our interests without us raising a single objection to it. When the UN becomes the paragon of moral virtue, then maybe we’ll take them seriously enough to consider it.

A New Era At The UN … We Hope

The long international nightmare of the Kofi Anna era ended yesterday when his successor, Ban Ki Moon, took his oath of office. He started his Secretariat with a joke about the daunting nature of his mission to restore faith and trust in the United Nations, and he continued by distancing himself from his predecessor’s outbound remarks:

Ban Ki-moon of South Korea was sworn in Thursday as the next secretary general of the United Nations, and he pledged to rebuild faith in an organization that has been tarnished by scandal and riven by disputes between rich and poor nations.
“You could say that I am a man on a mission, and my mission could be dubbed ‘Operation Restore Trust’: trust in the organization, and trust between member states and the Secretariat,” he said.
He added, “I hope this mission is not ‘Mission: Impossible.’ ”

After praising Annan for his work at Turtle Bay, Moon noted that Annan’s remarks about American foreign policy reflected Annan’s own personal opinion and should not be considered part of the UN’s approach to the US. In fact, he acknowledged that the UN and the US had worked at cross purposes and that he needed to rebuild trust with the American people.
It’s not a bad start for the new leader of the UN. He seems to have more of a sense of humor than Annan; Fox News had a clip of him from a reception earlier this month spoofing himself by singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” but replacing Santa’s name with his own. A man who does not take himself with deadly seriousness is one with more potential to handle criticism and accountability.
He made one slip yesterday that might play well in the Anglosphere. When asked a question in French by a Canadian journalist, Moon had to request that the reporter translate the question into English as he had difficulty in understanding the language. The question, as it turns out, was about Moon’s understanding of the importance of keeping French as the second official language of the UN — a reference to the French insistence that any UN Secretary-General be fluent in their language.
On a more serious note, he spoke out against the recent bout of Holocaust denial in Iran. Calling such efforts “not acceptable,” he also criticized Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call to have Israel wiped off the map. Annan had done much the same in the waning days of his last term of office, and the continuity will make it easier to keep Iran on the hot seat. (Annan had actually criticized the Holocaust denial while in Teheran earlier this year.)
Ban Ki Moon still remains a relative mystery to most Americans. Who is this new leader, and will he make the UN relevant again — a force for freedom and liberty, rather than a tool of dictators and kleptocrats? In order to find the answers, we will have the intrepid Claudia Rosett on the Northern Alliance Radio Network tomorrow afternoon at 2 pm CT/3 pm ET. Be sure to tune in at AM 1280 The Patriot or listen to the station’s Internet stream as we ask the media’s best expert on the UN and its surrounding scandals how Moon can change the culture at Turtle Bay and who he has been until now. You can pose your own questions by calling 651-289-4488 during the show tomorrow.

The Rosett Rewrite

When Kofi Annan penned a column for the Washington Post yesterday in advance of his valediction at Turtle Bay, I wrote that his article read like a parody written by Claudia Rosett. Instead, the tireless researcher and critic of the United Nations and Annan rewrote Annan’s speech for the pages of National Review. Rosett tries something that Annan avoided — the truth:

Thank you for that generous introduction. I don’t deserve it. Please hold your applause until you hear what I have to say. This is not false modesty. I am quite serious — I don’t deserve the honor of speaking here today. At least once in every life there comes a moment of honesty, and for reasons I cannot fathom — perhaps the shock of looking back at just what a self-serving failure I have been — this is mine.
During my decade as secretary-general, and indeed for some time before that, I have indulged in more than my share of half-truths, quarter-truths, cover-ups, immoral inanities and staggering hypocrisies. I have shuffled paperwork while ignoring genocides, I have rushed to shake hands with tyrants while deriding democrats; I have suffered from memory gaps while adroitly recalling just enough to know what needs covering up. I took office promising to reform the U.N., and instead produced a record that deserves to be summed up by such phrases as peacekeeper rape, procurement bribery, and Oil-for-Food.
I have praised a “reformed” Human Rights Council that functions as a complete farce. I have demanded “peace” deals and pushed for a brand of morally blind diplomacy that has paved the way for a terrorist takeover of Lebanon, worsening turmoil in the Middle East, and a nuclear-armed Iran. In contradiction of the U.N. charter, which describes my role as the U.N.’s “chief administrative officer,” I have styled myself, in my own phrase, as “chief diplomat of the world,” setting up a vast array of opaque trusts, projects, partnerships, and programs which have massively expanded the U.N. beyond any provisions for oversight, while providing me with opportunities for patronage, and places to park my cronies. At the same time, while entrusted with a budget of billions, and a world stage, I have shirked all responsibility for my own failures, shifting blame especially to the United States.

Readers will get less laughs from this one, and a greater sense of what was lost during the Annan era. If global justice exists, this should serve as the epitaph to the outgoing Secretary-General’s term in office. With any luck, it will serve as a warning to the incoming leader, Ban Ki Moon, as to how to proceed. (via CQ reader Charles R)

Kofi: I Learned Projection

Kofi Annan has an op-ed column in today’s Washington Post that must be read to be believed. The column, which serves as a valediction of sorts, talks about what Annan has learned from his time at the United Nations. If his rule hadn’t resulted in such worldwide misery and despair, it would be one of the funniest pieces of opinion journalism so far this year.
The laughter reaches its apex here:

My fourth lesson, therefore, is that governments must be accountable for their actions, in the international as well as the domestic arena. Every state owes some account to other states on which its actions have a decisive impact. As things stand, poor and weak states are easily held to account, because they need foreign aid. But large and powerful states, whose actions have the greatest impact on others, can be constrained only by their own people.
That gives the people and institutions of powerful states a special responsibility to take account of global views and interests. And today they need to take into account also what we call “non-state actors.” States can no longer — if they ever could — confront global challenges alone. Increasingly, they need help from the myriad types of association in which people come together voluntarily, to profit or to think about, and change, the world.
How can states hold each other to account? Only through multilateral institutions. So my final lesson is that those institutions must be organized in a fair and democratic way, giving the poor and the weak some influence over the actions of the rich and the strong.

Accountability? Accountability? This comes from the man who presided over the biggest fraud in history, the Oil-For-Food Program. His son and his cronies dipped their beaks in a program that put billions of dollars into the pockets of Saddam Hussein and spread corruption throughout the world, all the while with Annan scolding the US and the UK for their efforts to bring accountability to Saddam. After the exposure of the OFF scandal, Annan spent his time ducking any accountability at all for the debacle.
Come on, WaPo — level with us. Claudia Rosett wrote this as a spoof, right?
There’s plenty more laughs in Annan’s goodbye screed. He tries to use Hillary Clinton’s outline for It Takes A Village by telling readers that we are all responsible for each other’s security, and that we are all responsible for each other’s welfare. I’m sure that the people dying in Darfur will take great comfort in those words, in which the outgoing UN chief invokes them alongside the word “genocide” but manages to avoid applying it directly to them. Rwanda’s victims also would second Annan’s words, if any of them remained alive.
He then goes on to mention the rule of law and the need for states to play by the rules. However, in his quest for accountability, he fails to mention what consequences should come from failures to do so. We wanted to hold Saddam accountable for twelve years of intransigence in relation to 16 UN Security Council resolutions — and Annan opposed the effort. We want to hold Iran accountable for its defiance of the non-proliferation treaty — and Annan has little to say about that as well.
Accountability. Annan. Not exactly two terms one would tie together in UN history. This laughable attempt by Annan to do so will not succeed in anything except providing a much-needed laugh to Post readers.

Dutch Distribute Badges Of Dishonor

Remember the Battle of Srebrenica, where the UN set up a sanctuary for Bosnians during the war against the Serbs? The city had been garrisoned by troops from The Netherlands, who provided security for the city as part of the UN contingent. I’m sure you recall the brave stand by Dutch peacekeepers that saved the refugees from being massacred by the Serbians in reprisal for attacks by the Bosnian Army … right?
What? You don’t remember it that way? Well, apparently the Dutch do, because they’re issuing an insignia commemorating their participation in the mission that allowed the massacre of thousands of refugees (h/t: CQ reader Mr. Michael):

The Dutch government said the troops deserved recognition for their behaviour in difficult circumstances.
Presenting the insignia to some 800 soldiers from the Dutch battalion (Dutchbat) at a military barrack in Assen, Dutch Defence Minister Henk Kamp said they had been unjustly seen in an unfavourable light.
He said they were sent to Srebrenica on a mission impossible – without enough weaponry – and a limited mandate.

Any soldier presented with this should refuse to wear it. It should be seen as the Scarlet Letter of insignias, given the nature of the collapse of the Srebrenica defense. A 2002 report split the blame for the massacre between the UN and the Dutch, noting that the Dutchbat contingent ran away from Srebrenica without firing a shot in its defense.
Without a doubt, the UN has the overarching responsibility for Srebrenica. Their peacekeeping efforts — at the time under the charge of Kofi Annan, who would succeed to the Secretariat nonetheless — became a model for Turtle Bay’s irrelevancy today. Peacekeepers had conflicting rules of engagement that discouraged action even in self-defense, and they seriously underequipped the troops for their missions even at that. We have seen the same type of response several times from blue-helmeted units, most recently when violence erupted in Kosovo that claimed 19 lives.
However, it was the Dutch who ran without even bothering to discharge their weapons to protect the refugees of Srebrenica. Thousands of civilians were murdered, and they didn’t lift a finger to stop it or prevent it. Their commander bears the blame for that decision, but the troops do not deserve any recognition for the humiliation of the collapse of their responsibilities. They have no honor coming to them for Srebrenica, and the Dutch government dishonors itself by attempting to grant it now.

The UN — Model Of Consistency

Almost from the first days of this blog, I have noted the continuing scandal of the United Nations peacekeeping efforts and their chronic sexual abuse of female refugees, many of them young girls. Despite over two years of these stories, the UN still has done nothing to purge itself of the disgusting practices of sexual exploitation and extortion. The BBC reports today that yet another peacekeeping mission has turned itself into a pimping expedition:

Children have been subjected to rape and prostitution by United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti and Liberia, a BBC investigation has found.
Girls have told of regular encounters with soldiers where sex is demanded in return for food or money.
A senior official with the organisation has accepted the claims are credible.

Credible? Try inevitable. With its lack of top-down discipline and a political structure that guards against accountability, no one should expect any different result. Despite physical evidence of these rapes and molestations, the UN has done nothing to punish those responsible, instead shipping the accused back home to their countries and ignoring the victims. The sexual abuse continues unabated, and why not? The UN has only offered training and more monitors who stand around and do nothing when confronted with violations.
This rot starts at the top. Kofi Annan, who headed the peacekeeping unit before becoming Secretary-General, set the tone for the most corrupt UN administration in its history by refusing to take any responsibility for the Oil-For-Food scandal. He used his office as a means of personal enrichment for his friends and family. He has focused on his own aggrandizement while atrocities raged unabated in Rwanda and Darfur, and has not lifted a finger to end the abuse described by the BBC.
How long will it take before member nations understand that they bear responsibility for these crimes through their funding of the UN? The only method left to demand reform of the organization is to immediately cut off their funds and padlock the doors until they take action to end sexual slavery in the peacekeeping missions. Let the UN operate out of coffee shops and libraries until they get their act together. When the money gets cut off and all of the bureaucrats stop receiving their graft, perhaps they will suddenly find enough motivation to make the necessary changes to bring accountability into the UN.
Or perhaps not, and the doors will stay closed forever. Given what we’ve seen for the past few years, either state will be an improvement. (via Hot Air and It Shines For All)