Let’s get real. Zimbabwe’s U.N. coup is not some extraordinary aberration, any more than the massive corruption under Oil-for-Food was due simply to some sort of unfortunate administrative fumbling at the top. This is how the U.N. works. This is how the U.N., as a grand collective, was, unfortunately, configured to work. This is how the U.N. — rolling in American money and support, but lacking any reasonable system of checks, balances, and accountability — will continue to work.
[…]
In recent years, we’ve seen the Human Rights Commission, chaired in 2003 by Libya, “reformed” into the current Human Rights Council — which spends even more time than its discredited predecessor doing nothing but condemning democratic Israel. We’ve seen peacekeepers raping the people they are supposed to protect, with each U.N. “zero tolerance” pronouncement followed by fresh scandal. We’ve seen Iran elected as a vice chair of the U.N. Disarmament Commission. North Korea currently serves on the executive boards of both UNICEF and the U.N. flagship agency, the U.N. Development Program, or UNDP. Since the January Cash-for-Kim expose of the UNDP allegedly ladling out hard currency to North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, Ban’s promise of a thorough and independent inquiry has been morphing into a cover-up in which U.N. auditors have yet to set foot in North Korea, or even request visas. And when it comes to the U.N. dealing with malignant rogue states, such as Iran and North Korea — or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before that — U.N. sanctions have become a dangerous farce, in which the main effects are to enrich sanctions busters without actually containing the virulent regimes.
As for the U.N.’s “Commission on Sustainable Development,” Zimbabwe’s new pride of place is just one symptom of deeper U.N. problems. We can now expect renewed hand-wringing over the U.N. set-up in which regional groupings take turns electing the leaders of assorted U.N. commissions. In this case, it was Africa’s turn, and for reasons that probably would not look good in daylight, the assembled political leaders of Africa chose Zimbabwe (just as they picked Libya in 2003 to chair the Human Rights Commission).
If we collectively and individually, don’t hammer into Peter MacKay’s red tory head, that we want Canada out of the UN and UN ultimately kicked out and disbanded, nothing will change at all.
I was participating in the DFAIT policy discussion on Small arms and light weapons back in 2006. It was moderated by a socialist hippie from DFAIT, who suppressed the voice of reason. My complaint to the minister has yielded a canned reply along the lines that Canadians want to support UN in whatever initiatives blah-blah.
The UN has been hijacked for years!
If you bail out of the UN you will not effect change in the UN, simply one less vote for common sense!
The lunatic countries long ago recognized that getting accepted was the first step to pushing out the more reasonable thinkers.
The same rationale is also being applied by the Islamic jihadists on an immigration level.
Will we wake up in time?
Aaron – I fully agree with your contempt and disdain for the UN. However, I don’t see how, yet, Canada can get out of the UN.
The UN is, and will continue to be, a completely corrupt and contemptible institution, not merely incapable of preventing human misery but actually promoting and enabling such misery in an exponential manner.
It was set up in a manner that was geared, inevitably, to failure. It is an unelected, unaccountable, totally self-governing gang; it is isolated completely from the effects of its actions/inactions – and rapidly transformed itself from its idealistic origins into the current reality of a corrupt gang, a mafia-style family, focused only on the well-being and enrichment of its gang members – the UN delegates.
We, the post war generation, were raised within the ideology; we have ignored until the past few years, the reality. We ignore that the UN long ago moved out of any commitment to the original ideals and into its nature as a corrupt gang, with its own rules, its own control over membership, its own agenda of individual greed and personal enrichment.
Additionally, besides the agenda of personal corruption, the UN has morphed into a tool of the undemocratic states of the world. It has been structured into such a tool by its ideological refusal to evaluate, whether such evaluation be for democratic rights, for human rights, for the safety and security of person and livelihood. Compare with the EU, which to its credit, evaluates the democratic infrastructure of each applicant.
The UN has, in its relativism, ignored territorial abuses, genocide, corruption, greed, human abuse etc. It has ignored the corruption of its own officers. It ignores the realities and results of the ME Islamic dictatorships, the dictatorships of Africa and L. America, the emerging industrial states of China.
Within such a structure of blind relativism and turning its back on human suffering, the UN has revealed that it holds agenda to destroy the West in its democracy, its industrialism, its well-being.
Kyotoism, as a money laundering travesty, is a clear example of this particular UN agenda.
It is only in the past few years that criticism of the UN has surfaced. The first reaction was to ignore the criticism; finally, the UN began to, faintly, acknowledge the need for reform (Kofi Annan’s left hand waved about the need, while his right hand continued the corruption).
But its current agenda to destroy the West, Kyotoism, is well funded and supported by the leftist utopians.
Dissent against the UN will continue to rise, and blogs must be at the forefront of such criticism.
Eventually, in a few years, the criticism will reach a critical threshold. and states might, just might, start to pull out.
I don’t think that the time has been reached. It must be, at some time soon, and yes, it has to be first, the ‘lesser nations of the West’ to begin the pull-out. Canada, Australia….
But, I think that the Conservatives need a majority for that. Again, the Canadian public is deeply brainwashed…
Personally, I would like to get the UN out of the US.
Now, I wish Claudia would go after California (D)Sen Dianne Fienstien for awarding her Husband’s Company $5.7 Billion dollars in Military Construction jobs while she was on the MILCON Committee.
We need to be in the UN exactly why?..
To protect those unfortunate from the lunatics in the UN itself? I am not buying that idea.
If Canada and the US leave, and the US kicks the monkeys out of their cozy building in NYC, they will disintegrate within weeks – there will be no more incentive to spend time concocting fraud schemas, when the money river will dry up.
The best part of pulling out of the UN will be that its moronic ‘resolutions’ and ‘programmes’ will no longer be binding. We are wasting so much funds to support the entire tower of Babilon. We could have achieved those few tasks on the international scale that the UN helps us to achieve (just assuming that there are a few, but don’t actually know of any – the UN can’t be completely useless, can it?) by other means and w/o a middleman.
we should stay in, but not pay.
The USA should stop funding the zoo as well.
No money, no fun for the sordid collection of mass murdering, narrow minded bigots that run 75% of the world’s nations
I agree that the UN is a corrupt organization and Canada would be better off without it. The world would still need an international body to take its place. One that has a hierarchy of membership. The more democratic the country the more voting privileges it is granted. An organization that has fewer functions and instead focuses on things like security and trade.
” 7. Marginalize and euthanize the UN , NATO , the International Atomic Energy Agency , and other September 10 transnational organizations and devote the energy wasted on them to results-oriented multilateralism . We need real allies now ”
Mark Steyn , America Alone .
Has the UN ever been less relevant ?
Impassioned comments ET! Keep on hammering those excellent words against the iron curtain that’s hiding reason from John and Jane Public.
I think the Fonz has donned his leather jacket and is getting set to jump the Kyoto shark tank.
With energy costs skyrocketing, communistic regulation impinging and the enviro’s banging their drums in our homes daily ad-nauseum, people are becoming much more willing to listen and support arguments that are less radical and more reasoned. Something about how we become better listeners when our backsides get up against a wall.
The key is good accurate commentary that’s easily accessible for frustrated citizens to find. It’s good information and voices of reason that will bring down the fraudulent walls constructed by special interests and media. The contributers to SDA like yourself provide some of the best of both.
Fix the UN ourselves.
You’re right, it would be hard just easily withdraw (although we could boycott the really bad committees). I like the idea of not paying. I wrote a piece recently that proposed we set up a new organization across the street — or maybe Ottawa? It would only admit democracies. There are now about 30 to 50 that are legitimate, and enduring.
They would still be infuriatingly inefficient, but they would not represent the Enemy Superstate that the UN now comprises. John McCain has suggested a similar idea.
Here’s more:
FIX THE UN
Pro Patria
DemocracyRules
The UN could serve a useful purpose in world conflict but it doesn’t and it has degenerated in what all unaccountable bureaucracoes do..a Kleptocacy…the UN is the palce you go to network international profiteering…Kyoto, Oil-for-foodUM/Worls back exploitation of basket case 3rd world nation’s resources…need I say more?
Is it too deeply corrupted by kleptocrats and profiteers to reform? Probably….and who can you trust to step up to the plate to do it anyway? How much will “house cleaning cost?
Maybe it is better to just pull out and make greater committments to a NATO based treaty alliance with liberal democracies only.
If we get any more “caring and compassion” out of the UN it will be the death of us.
There have long been two standards of inevitability;
death and taxes.
There are those who believe that death is the preferable of the two;
at least it doesn’t get worse every time the UN meets.
Can somebody remind me again why there is no coverage of the UN’s malfeasance on CBC/CTV, say? And why Maurice Strong gets some special dispensation from any coverage?
The Bush Administration hates corruption in the UN. Then members of the Bush Administration join UN bodies like the World Bank, and immediately engage in corruption by enriching their partners. And then people wonder why the UN is corrupt. What alternative are you going to create when members of the socalled moral paragons themselves engage in what they are against.
I say we should get ourselves out of the UN and boot the whole damn UN out of our nation and repeal all those world herratage sites in this nation after we got ourselves out of UNESCO