Free Republic

The U.N. can't possibly stop Iran. Sunday, September 3, 2006 12:01 a.m. Despite last week's United Nations deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear bomb program, Iran has done no such thing. The next diplomatic move is supposed to be for the U.N. to impose sanctions on Iran. That won't work, either.

Americans frequently express dissatisfaction with the United Nations. Their reasons are numerous: dragging its feet on Darfur; the corrupt practices exposed in the Oil-for-Food scandal; refusing to accept meaningful management and financial reforms; electing Iran as vice-chair of the Disarmament Committee and placing Cuba on the Human Rights Council, among numberless other foibles and failures. All of these complaints are justified, but they confuse the symptoms with the disease. The problem is not what the UN does but what it is, or, more accurately, what it is not. It remains based on the premise that there is such a thing...

One story that went the rounds in the Philippine National Penitentiary concerned the Cockroach Men. To hear the Bat tell it, the guards were always listening for escape plans being tapped out on the walls. "If you started tapping on walls, the guards would figure out you were trying something." No one asked the Bat how he knew, though he unquestionably belonged in the Big House. But you forgot that part and listened to the story. "So these two guys were about three cells apart on the row and they had to communicate without the guards knowing. How do you...

Today’s “International Community, that group of utterly feckless, corrupt, boobs produce lots of words, resolutions and demands but of course no substantial action. The head hypocrite and the worst Secretary General in U.N history Mr. Koffi Annan has overseen the continued devolution of an already failed , corrupt and inept institution. Mr. Annan’s has overseen the devolution of this never-good institution into an institution of moral and criminal depravity. Here are some of the things Mr. Anna’s U.N has accomplished: * Engaged in the rape and pimping of adolescent refugees in around the globe. * Overseen the largest bribery scandal...

The Irrelevant UN By Jenni Vinson Trejo January 4, 2005 On January 8, 1918 President Woodrow Wilson explained to the US House and Senate that the world had gotten smaller and that nations now affected each other so we needed to form a group of nations who agreed to work together. The world was embroiled in World War I. Wilson put forth fourteen points intended to serve as the basis for an alliance and world peace. Point 14 says: "A general association of nations should be formed on the basis of covenants designed to create mutual guarantees of the political...

Al AP is reporting that Bush was overheard expressing his frustration with Kofi Annan and liberal world leaders during the G8 summit. He was unaware that the microphone was still on when he told Tony Blair, "see the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this (expletive) and it's over." Bush also said that he felt like telling Annan to get on the phone with Assad instead of calling for a "cease fire". This clearly proves that it was Bush's hand that turned the tide of world opinion at the...

UN is like the Twilight Zone, says Bolton (Filed: 01/05/2006) In his first interview with a British newspaper, America's ambassador to the United Nations tells Alec Russell why it is in dire need of reform John Bolton was in his element. America's famously blunt UN ambassador and hundreds of other senior diplomats had just spent almost two hours twiddling their thumbs in a deadlocked meeting awaiting a letter from the secretary general. John Bolton says he is not combative. ‘I am assertive’ Then moments after the document arrived, the session was adjourned as the representatives of the developing world retired...

Failed, useless, dubious, impotent, pernicious, morally exhausted… Every crisis is an opportunity, a time when the fissures and cracks of received wisdom and worn-out habits of thought are exposed. The years since the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have been such a time for the United States. Decades of intellectual corruption, moral flabbiness, and blithe indifference to the reality of a dangerous, unpredictable world all culminated on 9/11. Yet despite the gruesome severity of that lesson, the same bad habits persist. Nothing demonstrates this truth more clearly than the unwillingness of many Americans, including the current administration, to accept once and...

Bolton's sin is telling truth about system May 15, 2005 BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Remember the tsunami? Big story, 300,000 dead; America and other rich countries too "stingy" in their response; government ministers from every capital on earth announcing on CNN every 10 minutes more and more millions and gazillions. It was in all the papers for a week or two, but not a lot of water under the bridge since then, and as a result this interesting statistic may not have caught your eye: Five hundred containers, representing one-quarter of all aid sent to Sri Lanka since the...

When the world's nations gather to debate how best to conduct relations between themselves, it is only logical that a worldwide meeting place based on fairness and equality should be the forum. For half a century, that place has been the United Nations. However, modern times have shown that the idealistic solution has severe and sometimes catastrophic limitations. The spectacular failures of the U.N. have shown that its ability to counter malicious minded intent to deceive the organization is almost non-existent. In addition, its fairness doctrine which assume all nations participate with equal authority does not take into account that...

It was just two weeks ago, in a rented suite of offices on the 15th floor of an anonymous Manhattan office block, that Benon Sevan finally discovered his story would not hold. For months, the burly, bristling Armenian-Cypriot, known within the United Nations for both his bonhomie and bad temper, had insisted the talk of oil deals with former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and strange petroleum companies in Panama had nothing to do with him. On January 21, however, the former head of the UN's Iraq oil-for-food program was confronted by proof of his deception by Paul Volcker. The former...

Two top U.S. lawmakers demanded UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to take an immediate action to end violence in the Sudanese western region of Darfur or resign. A spokesman for the UN rejected the call by Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia, saying that Annan wasn’t in a position to force any action. The two lawmakers also criticized a UN report, released on Monday, for not recommending an action to end the fighting, claiming that the report was influenced by internal UN politics. "We cannot wait any longer for credible action on Darfur," Brownback said....

Only 34 percent of Americans believe the United Nations should be in charge of international relief efforts for victims of the South Asia tsunami that killed more than 150,000 people Dec. 26, according to a survey. The Rasmussen Reports poll of 1,000 adults also found 83 percent believe the United States is generous when confronted with the emergency needs of other nations. Just 12 percent believe the U.S. is stingy, a question apparently prompted by U.N. Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland's negative assessment of the U.S. and other Western nations in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. Support for...

UN 'failing to co-ordinate relief efforts' By David Ibison and Jake Lloyd Smith in Banda Aceh Published: January 7 2005 02:00 | Last updated: January 7 2005 02:00 Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, lands in the tsunami-ravaged Indonesian city of Banda Aceh today amid growing frustration on the part of aid agencies over what they say is the UN's inability to co-ordinate the world's response to the disaster. The UN is being criticised for its failure to organise dozens of aid groups in and around Banda Aceh more than a week and a half after the tsunami hit...

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan practically broke his arm the other day in his continuing effort to pat himself on the back. (Hey, someone has to do it.) Annan insisted that the United Nations' current commitment of 25 election monitors for the entire country of Iraq on Jan. 30 will get the job done. ``We have enough people in there to do the work,'' he said during a trip this week to Washington. ``And if need be, we'll put in the staff we need to get the work done. It's not a question of numbers; it's a question of what you...

Things are going badly for Kofi Annan. The Oil for Food scandal has revealed U.N. behavior regarding Saddam Hussein's Iraq that ranges from criminally inept to outright corrupt. Rape and pedophilia by U.N. peacekeepers haven't gotten the kind of attention they'd get if American troops were involved, but the scandals have begun to take their toll. And the U.N.'s ability to serve its crowning purpose — the "never again" treatment of genocide that was vowed after the Holocaust, and re-vowed after Cambodia and Rwanda — is looking less and less credible in the wake of its response to ongoing genocide...

There was a time when, if you wrote or spoke out against the United Nations, you would be dismissed as some "right-wing nutcase" who saw conspiracies or was some kind of "isolationist" who didn't understand the need for an international forum where the problems of the world could be resolved without resort to warfare. Turns out that the United Nations, founded in 1948, is not simply incapable of stopping wars and genocides, it is so utterly corrupt that it needs to be eliminated entirely in the hope that the many other existing international organizations, treaties, unilateral and bilateral relations can...

The UN Security Council voted unanimously today to step up the global campaign against terrorism, calling on all nations to prosecute or extradite anyone supporting, financing or participating in terrorist acts. The 15-0 vote at UN headquarters in New York culminated weeks of negotiations by Russia, which introduced the resolution after militants staged a series of attacks there including the suicide hijacking of two planes and the hostage-taking of a school in Beslan. It was adopted a day after several car bombings targeted Israelis in Egyptian resorts in Sinai. “We think these events stressed even more the urgency to take...

Omega Letter Christian Intelligence Digest No Help For Iraq From UN Commentary on the NewsMonday, September 27, 2004 - Omega Letter Editor "Our struggle is your struggle, our victory will be your victory and if we are defeated, then that will be your defeat," Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told the UN General Assembly this week. In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly's annual session Allawi urged governments to put behind them the divisions over Washington's invasion of Iraq that ousted Saddam Hussein and later called "illegal" by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "Some countries objected to the war,...

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has caused a storm with his recent admission to the BBC that the US invasion of Iraq was "illegal." Recall that in the tense days leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, Annan was pressed on numerous occasions to take a clear position on the legality or otherwise of a preemptive war against a UN member state, without authorisation of the Security Council, and at no point did he clearly state that an invasion would be illegal. On 17 March 2003, Annan was asked point blank by a reporter: "Should the United States go...