Any aid the US sends should circumnavigate the UN. We shouldn't give to allow their bureaucrats and thieves to skim the cream.
Posted on 12/29/2004 5:07:39 AM PST by IronJack
Congress should pass a resolution demanding the resignation of Egeland immediately and give the UN 15 days to comply. after which we should cut off the UN from the US contribution until Egeland is gone. It should be made clear to the UN that we are done with mindless criticism from well-paid UN officials, and that the Secretary General will either take charge of that fartbasket and run it professionally or we will arrange to have the movers come and ship it somewhere--Labrador, maybe, or the Indian Ocean. Anywhere and I don't care, as long as it is outta here.
Hear, hear!
Should be echoed in papers nationwide.
What Jan Egeland [Mr. Stingy] really said [short transcript]
How about taking account of the fact that Egeland wasn't slamming the US response to the tsunami but talking about the miserliness of countries that only contribute 0,0 or 0,1 percent of their GDP in developmental aid? (I'm not even sure he mentioned the US specifically.)
While I don't know why he needed to make that observation now, it's improper to demand his or anyone's resignation on a fictitious basis.
The .02 reference was a thinly disguised jab at the US, since it is often quoted in reference to US GDP. I watched the interview on the Newshour. Mr. Egeland also dropped in a comment or two about global warming, another thinly veiled jab at the US refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Since the discussion was about was the tsunami these jabs were way off topic.
And Egeland is made even more ridicuous by the fact that his employing organization skimmed off billions of dollars in aid money that was supposed to have gone to the Iraqis.
Given the current level of debt we are mired in, it is an excellent idea.
Any aid the US sends should circumnavigate the UN. We shouldn't give to allow their bureaucrats and thieves to skim the cream.
All right, it may be fair enough to slam him on those grounds, but those are not the ones that IronJack slams him on.
Why I am so incensed when a piece of self serving global fecal matter performs his guilt trip in hopes of ravaging aid that should be going to the victims.
Hey Egeland we already have 35 million dollars in aid in the air why aren't you in the disaster area doing something useful.
You are a waste of time and space, an embarrassment to the human race.
By the way, it is incorrect that his employing organization (the UN) skimmed off billions in Oil-For-Food. Private companies in liason with the Baath Party are suspected of having done so, possibly with the connivance of one or two UN officials. The whole program was supervised by members of the Security Council who had access to every contract. I don't mean to quibble but accuracy matters.
Why didn't the UN help put in place a tsunami warning system?
The UN wants cash upfront with no accountability so they can skim the lions share and put it into their own corrupt pockets...
Pres Bush is correct in that we need to wait and see where the need will be...then mobilize on our end...
Not one penny of U.S. tax payer's money should go to the UN or large corrupt 'relief' agencies.
They use the cover of the emergency to shuffle around funds and co mingle them in order to steal...
The victims will see little of it...unless we have decent responsible people watching out..to throw our tax money at this without accountability of the people receiving it is as criminal an enterprise as the ones they engage in..
Potable water, food, shelter,medicine, fuel, preventive medicine teams, plus clean up equipment and manpower are what it needed...
But not through the UN...which has proven to be nothing but corrupt...rotten to the corps..
Surprising not to see the ACLU looking for a handout in all of this...
imo
My article was written more to impugn the UN's elitist entitlement worldview than to indict a particular person. But Jan Egeland may be the poster child for socialist snobbery. For that, and his general incompetence in handling the PR requirements of his job, he should be summarily fired.
Exactly! He's been brain damaged by the toxic fumes of privilege and insulation that permeate the UN. This is an idiotic observation made at the worst possible time. Egeland should be unemployed.
Actually I am European - indeed, Norwegian as it happens! - so I'm in a position to correct your claim that Europeans do not donate privately. While I don't have figures at hand, it is customary in my country to donate handsomely to charities both foreign and domestic, quite apart from what is being done through taxes. This is also common in other Scandinavian nations, and, I am pretty sure, in most of Western Europe.
Your statement about Norwegians lacking individuality is also, to the extent that I known my countrymen, flat out wrong.
NB: In an inspired flash of technical ineptitude I also sent this to you as a private message - sorry about that! ;-)
No, the white flags are for shrouds to bury the dead in I think. Only useful thing France could be sending right now (other than some hooch for antiseptic).
I agree that his remark was inappropriate in this context, though I think it's a little harsh to demand his resignation over this. As I understand it, he was voicing concern that disaster relief would in many countries be drawn against general funds for developmental aid, and in passing he lamented that those funds often make up a smaller fraction of GDP than they used to do. This latter point didn't come off too well, but it was hardly his main point. I'll also have to disagree that it necessarily constitutes 'socialist snobbery'.
There is of course ample room for improvement within the UN. But Jan Egeland is at least a committed idealist - he's not a cynical bureaucrat, much less in it for personal gain. I'm pretty sure about that, whatever it may be worth.
So much of the "progress" in the 20th century was made by committed idealists, I find this no comfort at all. Further, in light of the revelations about oil-for-food, and the sex scandals in the Congo, wouldn't a "committed idealist" sever ties with the UN and find a better way?
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