Posted on 12/28/2004 8:41:59 PM PST by CHARLITE
I only have access to a few English language television stations while I am visiting Israel: BBC News and CNN International. Every quarter hour they recap the top stories.
Today’s big story (after the non-stop images of a tidal wave taking out resorts frequented by Europeans and few Americans) is the comment of U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland who said that western nations, particularly the United States, were being stingy with their aid packages offered for victims of the disaster.
Without putting into context the fact that the United States provides more funding to the UN than any other nation and without talking about the billions of dollars in aid that the United States doles out to countries across the globe every year – it is amazing that Egeland isn’t asking the UN to pony up the loot it took from the Oil for Food program to help those affected by the angry sea.
The United States pledged $15 million in immediate aid while the entirety of Europe gave $31 million. I’m thrilled that Europe stepped up to donate more than the U.S. (the State Department indicated there was to come), but didn’t someone mention a few billion dollars sitting around the UN and it’s employees?
Oh yeah, that pesky little Oil for Food scandal. Ironic isn’t it that on the same day the UN was telling America to raise taxes to give more to the people in Asia, Paul Volcker, the lead investigator into the corruption at the UN, told Alhurra television that corruption and bribes, smuggling and kick backs were taking place right under the nose of the Security Council and that the final report will speak to the culpability and malfeasance of UN officials and member states.
Volcker called these things “mistakes,” but we know it was criminal (the word mistake does not adequately describe the crime of the century): $21.3 billion pilfered, stolen, kicked-back and out right bribes to the UN, member states and companies picked by Saddam himself. Nepotism and corruption was the rule rather than the exception and $17.3 billion of the $21.3 of corruption occurred on Kofi Annan’s watch.
Using the logic of the left and some on the right in this country Annan should resign.
He was in charge when Oil for Food went from ad hoc committee to full fledged program reporting directly to him and under the “if you’re the guy in charge when something happens, even if you were not around when the problem began – you are responsible” logic – Annan needs to go.
For those of you who need an example: Donald Rumsfeld is responsible for armor lacking on vehicles despite the fact that Congress decides how money is spent and is charged with oversight of the military. The Republican Congress and Bill Clinton built and designed the war machine that took out the dictator in Iraq and liberated 50 million people in the last 3 years. The left and the right are calling on Rumsfeld to resign despite the fact that he was nowhere near Congress when they did their Constitutional duty to stand and maintain the military. But, I digress from glee in pointing out the corruption at the UN.
Benon Sevan became rich during his tenure at the helm of the cash cow program that reported directly to the Annan. Sevan denies it, of course, but lucky for us – Saddam left a paper trail that goes from Baghdad to the UN, Paris to Moscow and China to South Africa.
Under the program, which ostensibly cares about the plight of the Iraqi people the UN earned a whopping $1.4 billion from a 2.2% “commission” to keep the bamboozle going.
The U.S. Senate investigation into the program said that a conservative estimate of Saddam’s take in the venture was $4.4 billion.
Knowing all we now know about the UN Oil for Food program – how about a significant portion of the $1.4 billion “commission” be sent to the people in the tsunami affected areas of the Indian Ocean before a UN under secretary of anything calls the most prolific giver of aid in the world stingy
If that doesn’t work Annan can tell his son, Kojo, to ask Cotecna, the company that coincidently paid him $50,000 after it won a lucrative UN contract, to give the money they earned to the victims in Asia (or return it to the Iraqi people - one or the other – it doesn’t matter).
Then ask the individuals who profited from the program to help out a little bit here and there. If you started collecting money from all of the civil servants at the UN who became millionaires there would be enough money to send billions in aid to the people in Asia.
Does anyone care that the UN has more millionaire secretaries than Enron ever did?
While they’re at it, find the money that Arafat took from the Palestinian people and nations all over the world – billions of dollars that keep his wife living in Paris with $20 million a year and the Palestinians in poverty.
The United States is the largest donor of aid in the world. The notion that a UN official would call the United States stingy is absurd, but that is a compliment when it comes from an entity like the UN where descriptors like corrupt, crooked and shameful are used every day to describe the theft of billions from the people of Iraq.
The point of all of this is that the people of the United States are fed up with the UN and adding insult to injury and aiding our enemy is enough, but it gets personal when you call the most generous nation in the world stingy when the UN has corruption at a scale never seen in human history.
Attila the Hun would be proud – the UN plundered billions and people died as a result. They did everything they could to keep Saddam in power so that the money would keep rolling in. What a wonderful example for the entirety of the world and I think I should throw something in here about glass houses, but I won’t.
Steve Yuhas is a columnist and a radio talk show host on KOGO AM 600 in San Diego. He can be reached at
steve@steveyuhas.com
Jan Egeland ...use some of the $21 Billion you stole from the mouths of the Iraqi children.....A**HOLE...
If UN diplomats paid their NYC parking fines, the USA could easily double the contribution to aid the Tsunami victims.
Egeland: I just want to throw him a beating. Or fire his keister at a bare minimum.
He'll use it alright.... to hire peasants to clean up the private island he bought in Indonesia.
Excellent article. Why should the United States continue to pay millions in dues for the "privilege" of belonging to this group of Unbelievable Nincompoops???
Please, oh please, let my great-grandchildren read in school about how Jan Egeland and Kofi Annan were responsible for the final downfall of the UN (League of Nations II).
LOL! Ain't it the sad and disgusting truth.
The U.N. is a despicable, corrupt, vile, P.O.S., hypocritical institution. They should be thrown off our shores, those stinkin, worthless, pompous, arrogant piles of steaming crap!!
(is that too subtle??)
Oh, the humanity. Tens of thousands of poor people to exploit. Just think of all the bribes and kickbacks the U.N. personnel could extort. And don't forget the brothels. Bribes, kickbacks, brothels, if only the United States weren't so stingy and would cough up enough seed money.
Can anyone supply the UN guy's email address? I need to express to him or his office directly the disgust and anger I feel. For him to play politics with this world's biggest donor, donor corporations, group of NGO disaster-relief orgs, churches raising money for far away needs, and individual donors from the very poorest to well ... I'm really not so sure about the very rich. How much will Teresa fork over? Michael Moore? All the Hollywood slut boys and girls? Maybe they could turn a trick or two for Ege Norway who wants all the gifts to be channelled thru his agency ... Did we get any disaster relief for Florida or other places hit by hurricanes? ... At the UN, they get their jollies by being the center of even our own gift-giving. That's what they do at the UN, play the game of putting their outfit at the center without doing anything to meet the bottom line. They don't create wealth or jobs or dividends, they just slurp up ours and damn us for being selfish. All these Eurocountries that disdained the coalition in Iraq, sacrificed no warriors, nor helped pay the financial load. Now they have the gall to call us selfish? This guy should be fired immediately, and I want to tell him so. Send him back to the Norwegian bureaucracy; he'll always have a job.
I'm amazed that those pompous elitists at the U.N. are able to actually walk a straight line with such humongous cojones.
I'd also like to be able to be in N.Y. when that skinny bird Jan Dude is strolling on the streets. I'd be chewing gum so that I could aim it at his face!
Hey world.........F**K YOU!
Egeland detracted the "stingy" statement this morning on CNN. Or rather, he explained what he meant by it.
IIRC, he said that he was asked a question about his opinion of the amount of foreign aid this year in GENERAL, not specifically with this disaster. And he thinks all rich nations should give a higher percentage of their GNP (that the average aid from rich nations was something like .1 to .2 percent of their GNPs per year.)
And that he wished more aid was given to less publicized emergencies this past year. Something like that...
http://reuters.myway.com/article/20041228/2004-12-28T190549Z_01_N28706943_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-QUAKE-UN-DC.html
UN Official Backs Down: Rich Nations Not 'Stingy'
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The international response to a catastrophic tsunami in Asia has been quick and generous, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday, playing down his earlier comments that wealthy nations were stingy.
U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland rowed back from statements he made on Monday after an annoyed Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington was "the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world."...
Egeland told reporters on Tuesday: "I've been misinterpreted when I yesterday said that I believed that rich countries in general can be more generous."
"It has nothing to do with any particular country or the response to this emergency. We are in early days and the response has so far been overwhelmingly positive," he said.
"The international assistance that has come and been pledged from the United States, from Europe and from countries in the region has also been very generous," Egeland added.
Countries have contributed or pledged tens of millions of dollars in the first few days after the disaster.
The United States provided an initial $15 million mostly channeled through the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, plus logistical support for aid efforts. On Tuesday, the U.S. Agency for International Development added $20 million for the earthquake relief, a White House spokesman said.
"Hey world.........F**K YOU!"
You got it right!
Other countries have claimed for years that the US is at the bottom of the list when it comes to making humanitarian donations as a percentage of GDP (using data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)). I was curious about this and visited OCHA's web site and found the numbers to be surprising.
Using the data for the 2003 Global Humanitarian Assistance, which includes Consolidated Appeals and Natural Disasters response, the USA accounted for 41.65% of total donations. This amounted to $3,277,941,061 US dollars. If one adds up the total US dollars donated by the individual countries of the European Union in 2003 as well as the European Commission and ECHO (European Commission), the amount comes to $1,812,547,419. GDP for the US in 2003 was 11 trillion and the EU was 10.522 trillion. http://ocha.unog.ch/fts/reports/pdf/ocha_18_2003.pdf
2002 data, US: $1,889,580,423 and EU-15: $1,691,434,884
2004 data: US: $989,156,831 and EU-15: $2,066,347,449
These are simply the numbers. I do not know if the 2003 figures include aid to Iraq. The numbers seem fairly comparable to me.
I guess the UN needs something to replace the Oil for Food scam, perhaps an Aid for Tsunami will do. One has to keep up the payments for the villas in Paris you know.
I read tonight that in addition to what our government gives in aid, the US citizens give $241 billion in charitable contributions. Wonder how much Mr. Egland gives?
Jan Egeland can be reached at: egeland@un.org. He hasn't responded to my letter, however.
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