Posted on 03/15/2003 10:24:18 AM PST by forest
US foots a quarter of the bill for that U.N. paper tiger, international debating society. In return we lose our liberty by bogus agreements, and get hundreds of ill-behaved, 3rd world diplomats and communist/socialist political activists over here instigating problems.
Can anyone imagine the current arrangement with Bill Clinton as U.N. secretary-general? Where could we all go?
Ron Paul: Get out!
Dick Armey: Either US or UN!
Jack Kingston: Dictators are running the UN.
Clearly, it's time to get out.
That's pretty darn close to what I heard on FOX the other day...22% out of what, 187 countries?
I was also surprised to learn that the UN has it's own pension fund for it's members, along with all the other perks! I'm gonna BARF!
John Birch Society!!
Someone ping the tinfoil-hat crowd so they can post their "funny" pictures, and post their "clever," "witty" comments about the conspiracy theories. Hurry--ping them before the words "New World Order" are mentioned.....
After we're done in Afghanistan, we should relocate all the survivors into temporary housing and then rebuild the flatland into a new modern city. This city should be named United Nations City and become the new home of the United Nations. Then the UN can relocate out of New York City and into a region that is centrally located between Europe, Asia, and Africa, in the heart of an historically troubled region.
Either do away with Afghanistan completely and divide the land amongst the bordering countries, or create a new international United Nations zone that is independent of any nation and occupies the former Afghanistan. Either way, the UN moves out of New York City. Then turn the old United Nations building into either a World Trade Center annex (ot even has dock facilities) or low-income housing.
Think of jobs for the people of Afghanistan. They can learn the construction business like Bin Laden did, or they can learn service-related skills to support the new businesses that will emerge. Bringing the UN to that region will offer a wealth of possibilities to the locals, as well as create a new "World Diplomatic Center" that is more easily accessible accessible to many people.
And as an added benefit, would Bill Clinton still want to be Secretary General if the UN were relocated to Kabul?
-PJ
25% seems to be pretty accurate. Note that it was 40% at one time. Talk about suicidal...
The ceiling. The largest distortion to equity has traditionally been the ceiling, which has capped the United States to an assessment level below its share of world income since the U.N.s creation. The ceiling was initially set at nearly 40 percent (when the U.S. accounted for more than half of world income); instead, member states agreed that the ceiling would be lowered in stages to the 25 percent level sought by the Truman administration as changing economic conditions and admission of new members allowed. The ceiling drifted progressively downward, reaching 25 percent in 1973the year the two German states were admitted to the United Nationsafter a strenuous campaign by the Nixon administration. Arguing for the final-stage reduction, then-U.S. permanent representative George Bush told Assembly delegates that, with the ceiling lowered to 25 percent in fulfillment of the 1946 agreement, the United States would never again seek a reduction in that cap.
That, of course, was then. In recent years Washington has begun calling insistently for a reduction in its assessmentfirst for peacekeeping expenses (set under the General Assemblys peacekeeping formula at 30.4 percent) and then in the regular scale. One of the conditions for U.S. payment of back dues included in the aborted 1997 agreement on U.N. funding between the U.S. administration and the Senate foreign relations committee leadership was a demand for a reduction in the U.S. assessment to 22 percent in 1998 and to 20 percent in 2000.
The call for a reduction in the ceiling drew considerable opposition among other member states, which would of course have had to pick up the difference. The existing ceiling, they noted, already assesses the United States at below its share of world income (which is 26.16 percent, using the 6-year base period); any further reduction would be counter to equity3. Whatever may have been the prospects for such a rate reduction (and they were generally handicapped as slim for a 22
percent rate, and virtually nil for a 20 percent rate), they evaporated after the U.S. Congress scuttled even the promise of U.N. funding when it adjourned in November.
While declining to tinker with the ceiling, however, the General Assembly did give notice it would revisit the question once U.S. arrears were paid. Even the offer to reopen the scale once the rates have been struck and applied is unprecedented indeed, in the international community the very offer is viewed as extraordinary.
Thhis and more here: http://www.unausa.org/newindex.asp?place=http://www.unausa.org/programs/scale.asp
Links page here: http://www.globalpolicy.org/finance/assessmt.htm
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