Free Republic

<p>Protesters in Haiti's capital are lashing out at U.N. peacekeepers and the government, blocking roads and attacking foreigners' vehicles.</p> <p>Demonstrators are setting up burning barricades, and Haitian police have fired tear gas.</p> <p>U.N. and non-governmental organization vehicles have been pelted with rocks.</p>

SKOPJE, MACEDONIA // Averting a humanitarian catastrophe was NATO's stated justification for bombing Serbia and its Kosovo province in 1999. But initial successes quickly succumbed to the reverse ethnic cleansing of more than 200,000 Serbs and other minorities by Albanian militants.

From Kofi Annan's press briefing today.... Q: On the tapes purporting that Saddam Hussein had warned the Americans that a WMD terrorist attack was coming, but not from Iraq. Do you take that seriously, or do you think it's water under the bridge and the whole thing should be forgotten? SEC.-GEN. ANNAN: I really haven't read in detail all these comments. At this stage, I think we should move on. We have a very challenging situation in Iraq which should be of interest to all of us to do whatever we can to stabilize. I would want to focus on...

Muslims want anti-blasphemy clause in rights body 09 February 2006 UNITED NATIONS: The president of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday took over fractious negotiations to establish a new UN human rights body, with Islamic nations wanting language against blasphemy because of the dispute over cartoons in a Danish newspaper. Jan Eliasson of Sweden, this year's assembly president, is conducting "intensive" bilateral talks with key UN members in an effort to resolve severe splits on the new rights body aimed at replacing the discredited Geneva-based UN Human Rights Commission, his spokeswoman said. The aim is to get adoption this month,...

BRUSSELS, Jan. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- European Union (EU) foreign ministers on Monday asked Hamas to renounce violence and recognize the right of Israel to exist. "We have urged Hamas and all other factions to renounce violence, to recognize Israel's right to exist, and to disarm," Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, whose country holds the EU presidency, told reporters. The foreign ministers, in a meeting, asked the newly elected Palestinian Legislative Council to "support the formation of a government that is committed to a peaceful and negotiated solution of the conflict with Israel, based on existing agreements and onthe road map,...

THE United Nations — desperately in need of some positive spin — is considering a ploy to steal some of the Norwegian Nobel thunder by launching its own annual peace prize. It doesn't hurt that the highly politicized Nobel Peace Prize has been bestowed to such unpeaceful types as Yasser Arafat and appeasers like Jimmy Carter. [snip]"In the face of widespread corruption in Iraq's oil-for-food program, weapons proliferation and terrorism, it strikes one as both tone-deaf and feckless of them even to have that on the table."

NOW THAT virtually all of official conservatism and the Republican legislative juggernaut have opened up on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, with President Bush's winking acquiescence, it's time to explore a simple question: Just what is it that the guy has done? The answer is nada. It turns out there is no evidence that he did anything while the notorious and corrupted oil-for-food humanitarian program was operating in Iraq during the 1990s and beyond. This lack of even a charge comes in the face of Annan's unequivocal denial that he ever had a single thing to do with, or any...

THE SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE IRAQI MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS SAID HIS COUNTRY WILL SOON RELEASE TO THE IRAQI PRESS DOCUMENTS REVEALING THE NAMES OF COUNTRIES AND INDIVIDUALS WHO WERE INVOLVED IN THE 'OIL FOR FOOD' SCANDAL. (AL-SABAH AL-JADID, IRAQ, 7/6/04)

June 16, 2004 -- THE video only lasts four minutes or so — grue some scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over. Some who stayed wished they hadn't. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade — all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises. Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader. But these awful...

Second Front The United Nations is covering its rear in the oil for food (search) scandal. And now it's engaged on a second front as new evidence is emerging that a U.N. ambulance was used by Palestinian terrorists for their getaway following an engagement on May 11, in which 6 Israeli soldiers were killed. The Israelis have been making the charge for years that the U.N. and Red Cross have been providing cover for terrorists, with American taxpayers footing some of the bill. But now there's evidence to back up the charge. In video shot by Reuters in Southern Gaza,...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A number of sites in Iraq known to have contained equipment and material that could have been used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been either cleaned out or destroyed, U.N. weapons inspectors said Monday. The inspectors' report said they didn't know whether the items, which had been monitored by the United Nations, were at the sites during the U.S.-led war in Iraq. U.N. inspectors were pulled from Iraq just before the war began in March 2003 and the United States has refused to allow them to return, instead deploying its own teams to...

WASHINGTON, June 7 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Senator John Kerry released the following statement today on the crisis in Darfur: "The world did not act in Rwanda, to our eternal shame. Now we are at another crisis point this time in Sudan. The Sudan's western Darfur region demands the world's immediate attention and action. Rampages against defenseless civilians by government- sponsored militia have caused the deaths of an estimated 30,000 people, and more than one million have been made homeless. The Administrator of the US Agency for International Development estimated last week that at least 300,000 more will die and up...

Crumbling edifice of the UN By Susannah Price BBC United Nations correspondent The landmark United Nations headquarters in New York was state of the art when it was built more than 50 years ago. Impressive from the outside... Its gleaming marble and glass tower, a familiar sight overlooking the East River, is a popular tourist destination where visitors gaze at the impressive General Assembly and Security Council chambers. Behind the scenes, it is a different story. The plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling systems also date back half a century and have gone well beyond their useful life. The UN is...

Video Depicting Terrorists´ Use of UN Ambulance Released 01:37 May 31, '04 / 11 Sivan 5764 A new video, made available over the Internet, clearly depicts Arab terrorists using a United Nations ambulance as a getaway car during recent Gaza attacks. Much has been reported – albeit not in the Western press – about United Nations and Red Crescent vehicles transporting terrorists and firearms. Now a web site called Access Middle East has obtained footage taken on May 11 in Gaza's Zeitoun district by a Reuters cameraman of UN ambulances being used by Arab terrorists to transport weapons and personnel....

Reuters took video of armed Palestinians terrorists hiding in a UN ambulance on May 11... the same day that an Israeli APC was blown up by a roadside bomb. Reuters didn't show the video that day... or for 2 weeks after. Israel's Channel 10 finally showed it 2 days ago. The UN has denied that this happened for years... and Reuters hid the footage. This video is damning evidence. Please distribute widely! Video is at http://e.tln0.com/ame/archives/reuters_UN_amblulances_11_may_04.wmv

NEW YORK -- A book by three current and former U.N. employees about peacekeeping operations portrays wild parties with alcohol and drugs, and convicts and mental-asylum inmates passing as soldiers. Embarrassed U.N. officials have threatened firing or other disciplinary action against two of the authors, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson. U.N. rules bar employees from writing about their work without approval, which had been denied in this case. The third author, former U.N. employee Kenneth Cain, works full time as a writer. The book, "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Matters," covers the authors' experiences during the mid-1990s in Cambodia, Somalia...

United Nations peacekeeping troops are sexually exploiting teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to an investigation by the The Independent newspaper of London. Many of the girls, as young as 13, are mothers who give up their bodies to the U.N. soldiers in exchange for food to feed their hungry children. The girls, who live in the Internally Displaced People camp in Bunia, northeastern Congo, already are victims of multiple rape by militiamen. The British paper interviewed girls and aid workers who said every night girls crawl through a wire fence to an adjoining...

'Sarin Bomb!' v The Dud Heard Round the World by Scott Ritter from the May 21, 2004 edition Iraq sarin shell is not part of a secret cache By Scott Ritter DELMAR, N.Y. v In the mid-1980s I served as the intelligence officer for a Marine artillery battalion. Stationed in Twentynine Palms, Calif., I would often find myself deployed in the field, on exercises where thousands of live artillery rounds were fired downrange. In keeping with the Marine artillery motto of "shoot, move, communicate," we were always moving from one firing location to another to simulate modern war. This mobility...

UN staff in Congo face child sex claims By William Wallis in Nairobi Published: May 17 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: May 17 2004 5:00 One of the United Nations toughest missions in Africa is facing damaging allegations that peacekeeping troops as well as civilian UN personnel have been involved in the systematic sexual abuse of minors. William Lacy Swing, the Special Representative to the UN Secretary General in the Democratic Republic of Congo, told the Financial Times on Sunday that an ongoing investigation into the allegations would be "thorough" and that strict disciplinary measures would be taken to ensure...

<p>One of Sen. John Kerry's central foreign policy complaints is that President Bush has refused to give the United Nations more responsibility in Iraq. But Mr. Bush has good reason to be wary because the United Nations has become a dysfunctional institution.</p>