August 15, 2006
Olmert's bad judgment (and the fallacy of a cease fire being effective) aside, the UN has proven its weakness once again. Trying to make peace with a terrorist organization? The only reason for Hezbollah's being is to wipe out Israel. It has no interest in peace. But then, the UN doesn't exactly have its priorities in the right place. This is an agency whose main responsibility seems to be to provide high profile, high paying jobs for people who would never make it in real-world employment. Let's look at the UN's successes, shall we?
Anyone?
We do have, however, the Oil-for-Food scandal, the kiddie sex scandal in the Congo, Libya being chosen to chair the Human Rights Commission, and the spectacular failure to forestall genocide in Rwanda -- just to name a few.
When corruption scandals break in the corporate world (i.e. Enron and MCI Worldcom), mighty heads roll. The public demands justice. When corruption scandals break in the UN, a collective yawn is heard throughout the world, and business as usual commences. The public couldn't care less.
Why we are allowing this corrupt, broken-down institution have anything to do with world affairs is beyond me. Putting the UN in charge of peace in the Middle East is akin to putting the hens in charge of the foxes. It simply doesn't work.
The UN began as a noble idea and ended up being an albatross around our necks that we can no longer afford to hang on to. The only ones who benefit from the UN's existence are teapot dictators like Fidel "Is He Still Alive" Castro and frauds like Kofi Annan.
Jeff Jacoby put it succinctly:
The UN is a corrupt institution, one that long ago squandered whatever moral legitimacy it had. The UN's founding documents venerate justice and human rights, but for the past 40 years, the organization has been dominated by a bloc of states -- essentially the Afro-Asian Third World -- most of whose governments routinely pervert justice and violate human rights.
Inside the United Nations, there is no difference between a dictatorship or a democracy: Each gets exactly one vote in the General Assembly. The reason the UN indulges vicious regimes like those in North Korea, Syria, and Cuba is that they are members in good standing, and most other governments lack the courage to cross them. The UN cannot be fixed unless that changes -- and that isn't going to change.
The UN has to go -- the sooner the better.
Posted by: Pam Meister at
09:07 AM
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February 17, 2006
The panel's report, released Thursday in Geneva, said the United States must close the detention facility "without further delay" because it is effectively a torture camp where prisoners have no access to justice.As expected, the United States told the UN to go pound sand. The fact is that these "findings" are based on nothing but heresay and what the lawyers of the detainees tell them. The five UN "experts" have never even been to Gitmo!Annan told reporters he didn't necessarily agree with everything in the report, but "the basic premise, that we need to be careful to have a balance between effective action against terrorism and individual liberties and civil rights, I think is valid."
In a response included in an appendix to the 54-page report, the United States noted that the investigators had turned down an invitation to visit Guantánamo Bay. It rejected the findings and accused the investigators of selecting information to support their conclusions. The investigators declined to go to the camp after being told that they would be denied the opportunity to interview the prisoners.Give me a break. They don't need interviews with the detainees when the charges of abuse and unfit conditions have already been made by their attorneys. An inspection of the facility is more than sufficient to support or refute these allegations. But why refuse to even go there because of that one condition? They could certainly cite a refusal for detainee interviews as a qualification to their findings.
No, the UN doesn't want to go to Gitmo because they already know that they'll find conditions better than most prisons throughout the world. This is not some gulag. The military personnel who run the Gitmo facility bends over backwards to ensure that the treatment of detainees is as humane as you can get in a prison. Conditions that are far more humane, certainly, than they deserve. When a Congressional delegation - with members of BOTH parties - visited the facility earlier this year, they confirmed the situation there. "The Guantanamo we saw today is not the Guantanamo we heard about a few years ago," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif. On top of that, representatives from about 400 news organizations have also toured the prison, including Con Coughlin from the British newspaper The Telegraph. Of his recent visit, he writes:
Each cell has its own primitive lavatory and wash basin. The inmates are issued with tan-coloured prison clothing, are provided with a range of toiletries, games such as backgammon and chess - which they play by shouting moves to inmates in neighbouring cells - and a copy of the Koran. Each cell has an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca to enable them to conduct their daily religious devotions.Oh, the humanity!They are allowed two hours' exercise a day and to choose their three daily meals from a prison menu that includes ice cream, cookies and peanut butter. A fully staffed and equipped military hospital is available to treat any illness or medical condition, and the detainees have been treated for anything from wounds sustained fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan to cancerous tumours.
So the United States is supposed to close Gitmo based on a report of five UN "experts" who've never even been there? On who's authority? The United Nations? An organization where half the member nations are ruled by dictators, thugs and criminals? We're talking about enemy combatants united in their desire to kill Americans - military AND civilian. If the decision ever comes to close down this prison, it will be made by the military of the United States, not some bureaucrats at the UN.
I've got a better suggestion. How about we close down the UN?
Posted by: Gary at
09:40 AM
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December 28, 2005
Guess that makes it "legitimate", huh? And they didn't even have to bribe the guy with oil money. Imagine that!
Posted by: Gary at
02:14 PM
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September 07, 2005
Having had his complete mismanagement identified as a major cause of the scandal, the Secretary-General had this to say:
"The findings of today's report must be deeply embarrassing to all of us," Annan told the Security Council Wednesday. "None of us — member states, secretariat … can be proud of what it has found. Who among us can now claim that U.N. management is not a problem or is not in need of reform?"No need to worry about reform, Kofi. There's a certain John Bolton that would like to sit down with you and discuss some serious changes that need to come to Turtle Bay.
Fear the 'Stache!!
Posted by: Gary at
03:05 PM
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