Is the United Nations attempting self-parody? Posted on 02/07/2005 8:16:52 AM PST by SheLion
Is the United Nations attempting self-parody?
How else to explain the announcement that a panel has been elected to decide which complaints will be heard by the U.N. Human Rights Commission at its annual meeting in Geneva this spring -- and that three of the five members are Cuba, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia?
Placement on the diplomatically-named Working Group on Situations virtually guarantees that these abject human rights abusers won't be criticized, censured or sanctioned no matter what crimes they have committed, are committing or plan to commit.
If any senior U.N. officials are troubled by this system, they are too discreet to say so publicly.
The composition of the broader Human Rights Commission remains no less Orwellian. Currently, it includes not only China and Russia but also Sudan, just elected to another three-year term despite Khartoum's role in what the United States government calls genocide against black Muslims in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.
Last week, members of a separate U.N. commission appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan demurred. They said they were unable to find “sufficient evidence” to conclude that those responsible for the mass murders, rapes, home burnings and ethnic cleansing acted with “genocidal intent.” Instead, they said that what had taken place were “crimes against humanity with an ethnic dimension.”
Predictably, Sudanese officials announced that the U.N. had “exonerated” them.
Then there is the World Heath Organization, a United Nations “special agency.” WHO's Director General has just awarded its prize for “best anti-smoking and nutrition” programs to al Manar – the television station owned and operated by Hezbollah, among the world's most lethal terrorist organizations.
In fact, Hezbollah has killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization other than al Qaeda. Al Manar routinely broadcasts programs to millions in the Middle East inciting suicide bombings against Americans in Iraq and against Israelis wherever they may be found.
The U.S. government has placed al Manar itself on the “Terrorism Exclusion List” and even France has banned the TV station for violating that country's hate laws. (Examples: in November, al Manar ran programs accusing Jews of spreading AIDS in the Middle East; earlier, it ran dramatizations depicting Jews using the blood of Christian children to bake holiday pastries.)
But in the view of the World Health Organization, al Manar is doing important work by warning viewers that smoking is bad for the health – and, incidentally, instructing them that massacring infidels in good for the soul. A catchy slogan for both campaigns might be: “Blow up! But don't light up!”
The U.N. was not supposed to be such a burlesque. Between aggressors and victims, the U.N. was not meant to be neutral.
But, over the years, the U.N. fell into bad habits. When the Khmer Rouge was slaughtering the population of Cambodia, the U.N. failed to act. When genocide against the Tutsis was carried out in Rwanda, the U.N. sat on its hands. Actually, it was worse than that: A small U.N. force that was in the country was pulled back -- lest anyone wearing a blue helmet be killed along with the intended victims.
When mass murder was waged against the people of Bosnia and Kosovo, the U.N. exacerbated the situation. Srebrenica was the site of the worst case of genocide in Europe since World War II. In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army invaded a U.N. safe area – and with no opposition from U.N. peacekeepers -- separated Muslim families and murdered over 7,000 men and boys.
Yet when President Clinton intervened militarily in Bosnia and Kosovo, it had to be without U.N. authorization.
The U.N. turned a blind eye when Afghanistan was hijacked by al Qaeda terrorists. As Somalia collapsed into anarchy, it fecklessly negotiated with war lords who were interested only in stealing foreign aid from the mouths of starving children.
And then, of course, there is the steady drip of revelations regarding the U.N. Oil for Food Program in Iraq, the largest financial swindle in history. In recent days, questions have arisen, too, about the impartiality of the U.N.'s own investigation into this scandal.
On top of that are disclosures about U.N. peacekeepers in the Congo sexually abusing girls as young as 13.
Where terrorism is concerned, the U.N. has shown little interest. On the contrary, a General Assembly resolution virtually licenses the mass murder of civilians by those who claim to represent “national liberation movements.”
What does trouble the U.N.? Shashi Tharoor, a senior official, says that it is “the exercise of American power” that “may well be the central issue in world politics today.”
Is it not high time at least to consider alternatives to the U.N., to explore the possibility of developing new organizations in which democratic societies would work together against common enemies and for common goals?
Free Iraq could be a charter member along with liberated Afghanistan, democratic Taiwan (barred by Beijing from having even “observer status” at the U.N.) as well as Israel, the U.N.'s perennial whipping boy. The emerging democracies of Eastern Europe would surely sign up as well.
A little competition would be healthy for the U.N., an organization whose current policies and practices mock the intentions of its founders, an organization that American taxpayers may not be willing to underwrite indefinitely.
Clifford D. May is the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and a Townhall.com member group.
I say give them a day to clear out of the building, then implode the d@mn thing. The UN is a boil on the butt of the US -- time to lance it once and for all!!
I am ashamed to say that I never followed the UN until lately. I am not even sure when it landed in the US! But when they started the business of wanting to rule the world, my antennae went up!
I really don't think it's a good thing to be affiliated with and there it sits..............on our soil. Time for the UN to GO!
Well, there's much more important news going on these days for the media to concentrate on.
Seems there was a big beer bust of some of our scantily clad military women rolling in the mud in Iraq.
That will occupy front and center for days.
I think it's time to cut their budget by about, oh....I don't know.....25%? That would be easy to do just by removing the US from their member nations. Others would either follow or have to pick up the tab for the budget deficit.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!
Good idea! And I wonder if the President has to run and take a shower after having to speak there.
Not my words. I, too, would have named it differently.
Sorry, just being funny with that headline...
I say y´all are taking the UN thing much too serious. Who cares what they say?
The UN is a big,fat joke and has been for years.
I thought you were. hehe!
That place really makes me sick. And they sure are dragging their feet with this investigation. If they move two foward during a month, then they step back 4. This will never end.
Even though they are in a union all the cops are Republicans. Most of the cops can't stand the place.
I am just thankful for the whistle blower. Wonder who it was, btw? Oh well. I am just happy this mess has come to the surface.
Wonder what other dark filthy secrets they are covering up? You see the expensive suits on those men? Pathetic.
I read a thread not too long ago that they are also involved in Food for Sex. Figures.
IMHO, they started that right from their inception.
After all, Alger Hiss, Communist spy, wrote their charter.
It could be worse. There were several perfectly serious proposals to give the UN its own independent army and custody of all the world's nuclear weapons. Happily those proposals were relegated to the fantasy world they came from.
We all would have been devastated if FnKerry would have won. A very black cloud would have hung over America.
H.R. 1146 will WITHDRAW the USA from the United Nations' madhouse/cesspool
Go to: http://www.getusout.org/un/index.html . Then go lobby at http://www.conservativeusa.org/megalink.htm .
The United Nations is a corrupt disgrace and it is time for the USA to WITHDRAW from and defund the United Nations. Please tell your senators, congressmen and everyone you know to support Representative Ron Paul’s bill H.R. 1146 which would WITHDRAW the USA from the United Nations, prohibit US funds going to the UN and prohibit US troops serving under UN command. H.R 1146 is the American Sovereignty Restoration Act.
The whole mission of the UN is to take power, money and national sovereignty from the USA. Thus the United States must withdraw from and defund the UN and if we go, if we are lucky, the whole thing will implode.
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