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Time to Leave the United Nations

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  • Thought this article made some excellent points and wanted to pass it along for review


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    Let's Leave the U.N. and Move to Kookville!
    Written by Alan Caruba
    Monday, December 20, 2004

    There was a time when, if you wrote or spoke out against the United Nations, you would be dismissed as some right-wing kook, a 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.

    Well, friend, welcome to Kookville! Turns out that the United Nations 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 be allowed to do what the United Nations itself will not and cannot do.

    Hopefully, 2005 will be the year that historians mark as the one in which this bloated international criminal conspiracy imploded from its own dead weight.

    This is not a new thought for me, but it resurfaced as I read an October 9 news article about “a tough new anti-terrorism resolution aimed at stemming attacks on civilians by denying terrorists safe havens, weapons, financial resources, and freedom of movement.” Introduced by the Russian Federation, it was unanimously passed by the UN Security Council. It was described as strengthening the “essential coordinating role of the United Nations in the international campaign against the terrorist threat.”

    This is the same United Nations that did nothing when Red China invaded and occupied Tibet. And then gave Taiwan’s seat to Red China.

    This is the same United Nations that stood by while Rwanda went about the business of slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

    This is the same United Nations that has been unable to stop the Sudan from conducting genocide against more than a million of its Christian citizens. And Sudan is a member of the UN Human Rights Commission!

    This is the same United Nations that has been unable to persuade Syria to withdraw its occupation troops from Lebanon.

    This is the same United Nations that has stood by for years as the Palestinians waged a terrorist campaign against the Israelis and then chided the Israelis for building a fence as a means to defend themselves.

    This is the same United Nations that needed a coalition led by the United States to force Iraq to withdraw from its invasion of Kuwait and then spent twelve years passing one useless resolution after another to get Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to disarm. After its Oil-for-Food administrators and key members of its Security Council wallowed in corruption, it faintly blessed the US effort to remove an important base for terrorist planning, training, and funding. And remove an evil dictator from power.

    This is the same United Nations that needed the United States to intervene when the North Koreans invaded the south in the 1950s and whose atomic energy agency has been unable to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. Now Iran is thumbing its nose at the UN. It’s not nuclear proliferation that is the problem; it’s which country is led by people deemed most likely to use these weapons. The mere prospect of a nuclear exchange drove Pakistan and India to the table to resolve longtime conflicts.

    And, yes, this was the United Nations that stood by while the United States pursued a noble, but ill-fated war against the North Vietnamese when they invaded the south.

    The United Nations has been unable to respond to outbreaks of violence in Haiti, Somalia, Cambodia, and Kosovo, to name just a few places where it has demonstrated its ineptitude.

    It is the same United Nations that is trying to cover up the biggest scandal in history, the Oil-For-Food program it administered which put billions into the hands of Saddam Hussein, allowing him to bribe France, China and Russia, among others, to buy armaments while Iraqi citizens died from malnutrition, disease and the butchery common to Saddam’s regime.

    As the scholar Jeremy A. Rabkin points out, “The Security Council has never authorized outside military intervention solely to protect people from slaughter at the hands of their own government.”

    Now, three years since 9-11, an event that changed not just the United States, but alerted the entire world to the threat posed by an organization that is not a nation, but a group dedicated to imposing Islam, the Security Council has passed another useless resolution, vowing to do something about it.

    Meanwhile, the United Nations has been largely sustained by the nearly twenty-five percent of its annual budget paid by the United States, plus the $1.4 billion the US gives to United Nations’ programs and agencies. US taxpayers fund more of the UN’s activities than all of the other 177 member nations. At the same time, the vast majority of the recipients of US foreign aid routinely vote against the policies of the United States. Most of those opposing US initiatives come from Africa and the Middle East.

    Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, there have been 291 wars resulting in 22 million deaths. The US Department of State lists 36 terrorist organizations operating with impunity in at least 60 UN member nations. Fully 102 of 191 member nations do not have completely free and democratic governments. 47 member nations are dictatorships and the UN roster includes six terrorist states.

    A Gallup poll in September 2003 found that sixty percent of Americans said the UN was doing “a poor job.” It’s not just doing a poor job; it is actively seeking to undermine the concept of sovereignty for every nation in the world. It is actively seeking to become a world government. It wants to impose its own taxes. It wants its own military force. It wants to ban private ownership of guns. It wants control of the world’s seas. Its Kyoto Protocol seeks to impose limits on the use of various forms of energy vital to industrialized nations, while exempting some like China and India.

    There are elements of the United Nations that are doing some good work. It has helped refugees. Its World Health Organization presumably tries to improve conditions. There are, I’m sure other examples, but overall the UN is a cesspool of corruption and the nexus of evil that blithely ignores its original mandates.

    So, if by now you have been or are ready to join the rest of us kooks who want the US to withdraw its support, welcome to Kookville. Welcome to the existing and growing majority of Americans who think it’s time to withdraw from the United Nations and find other means to address the world’s problems, unilaterally, bilaterally, and effectively.

    http://www.chronwatch.com/content/c...1891&catcode=13
      December 21, 2004 1:42 AM GMT
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  • I think the Nut who wrote this has some valid points but doesn't understand the very real dangers that the US faces if it were to pull out of the UN and go it alone. I can see it ending up in an all out world war. Worse than all the others and it would end up with the destruction of the US and quite probably the rest of the worl with it.

    This is a very nieve veiw but understandable when you see facts laid out like that. I don't deny that the UN needs more backbone to actually deal with the problems it faces. Part of the problem being that the UN does not have its own forces and needs to beg the use of different countries to get things done. When the system works like this the only people who will help are the ones it benifits. If the Un actually had its own forces it would be able to send people in straight away when they are needed not beg countries like the US to send forces.

    I like the idea of the UN as a world government. That way the world gets a democratic government and big countries like the US has to play its part within the frame work not play by its own rules when it see's fit.
    To love what one has is to be resigned to never get what one wants. Natalie Clifford Barney.
      December 21, 2004 2:27 AM GMT
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  • I agree that there are some valid points in the article but it appears to have been written from a very American viewpoint of the world (its my game and I'll change the rules when I want to).

    OK the UN could do with a serious kick up the backside and hauling kicking and screaming into the 21st centuary, it needs a serious overhaul of the Security Council and a clear out of some of the innumerable paperpushers it employs. Part of its problem is getting anything done is like mating elephants - an enormous amount of effort, grunting and groaning but takes 2 years to see the results.

    I think there should be 4 extra seats on the permanent security council to represent South America, Africa, Australasia and a rotating chairmanship from outwith the permanent 8 members. That would mean there is a representative from every continent on the permanent council instead off the hugely Northern Hemisphere bias there is at the moment.
    Each permanent member will then "donate" 1 Battallion of troops to UN duties under the control of the UN for UN use only, thus giving the UN military muscle to back up its decisions. SHould additional troops be required other countries will have to "donate" troops as required.
    The world does need a "governing" body to keep everything (and everyone) in check, problem is like any government it gets too big and unwieldy and that's when corruption starts. A good clear out and start afresh and the UN can be what it was meant to be again.

    United we Stand, Divided we Destroy Ourselves.

    Alex
    xxxx
    Life's Too Short Not To..... Living on Dreams and Custard Creams...... You're Only Young Once...But You Can Stay Immature Indefinitely.....
      December 21, 2004 8:36 AM GMT
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  • The problem with any international organisation such as the United Nations is that it is in thrall of its most powerful member. I am English and , therefore, a member of the European Union. I am pro-European, but many people aren't and one of the reasons why is that the European Union is driven by its most powerful economy, and that economy is Germany. Many English, or perhaps I should say British, people, particularly amongst the establishment, simply cannot reconcile themselves to or accept that as a fact. The League of Nations failed abysmally in the 1930's to resolve the various conflicts around the world that would lead to global war because by far the most powerful country in the world, the United States, was not a member. The irony being that it was the U.S under President Woodrow Wilson that established it. The United Nations can only begin to fulfill it mission if it has a fully committed America on board until then it will remain essentially impotent. I only have to point to the recent conflict in the Lebanon, the current situation in Iraq, and the tragedy of Darfur as evidence of its sad inadequacy. This isn't to say that the United Nations isn't worth having. It is a wonderful concept but sadly one of our imagination. Until our obssession with sovereignty, with the nation state and petty nationalism ends and the borders start to come down, world peace and organisations designed to secure and administer it will remain a distant, if much cherished dream.
    Porscha
      November 17, 2006 10:02 PM GMT
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  • ***WARNING: MINA'S RANTING and BEING BITCHY HERE!!!***

    If you ask me (and nobody has), the UN needs to be truly a global union.

    It just isn't, regardless of how many flags fly there.

    It isn't just America that needs to fully participate; I'll buy into that much of Porscha's statement. The EU also needs to put aside its internal squabbling and (essentially) "put up or shut up."

    Part of the reason the UN isn't working is that the member nations are not willing to trust a globalized government. Each member continually puts their interests before the UN's. (The US is included here.)

    Because the US is (usually) the one that commits a goodly majority of troops to any action, frankly I'm tired of seeing our kids get shot up. (Don't even start me on the mess in Iraq/Afghanistan. I said right before that whole mess I saw a Vietnam-like issue rising up.) I'd like to see France, Italy, and perhaps Russia send their kids off to die for a change.

    Therefore, if I had my way, the UN would be abolished. It's a great idea, but impractical until we all decide to put other's interests before our own and work for the common good. A great place to start is with the issues that we as CD's/TG's/TS's have...you know, basic civil rights. Like being able to walk, work, and live freely as the women we are or wish to be. I also advocate making hormones an over the counter purchase.

    (I'm quite sure that Big Brother, who watches all us trannies, will come to visit me in the middle of the night now. Just remember, Mr. Soulless Government Bureaucrat, that I am a thinking woman...and should thus be considered armed and dangerous.)

    Luv'n hugs,
    Dr. Mina Sakura
    Living as the woman I am!
      December 1, 2006 6:15 PM GMT
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  • Well Mina, I wouldn't like too see anyones kids get shot up. But much like you I could see what a disaster it was going to be before it ever happened. It seemed so obvious that it is difficult to believe that supposedly intelligent, well-educated men could be so stupid. Or should I say blinded by their own strident political agenda that leads them to distort the truth and make ill-judged and for so many fatal decisions. It is a shame that it is always others that pay the blood price. As for Europe being more proactive internationally, we in this country can't even agree on Europe itself. The very concept of the sovereign state ensures that it will act in its own self-interest, and it would be remiss of it if it did not. So can the United Nations work? Quite possibly not, but I think Iraq, Afghanistan and various other conflicts show why it is worth persevering with.
    Porscha
      December 1, 2006 11:14 PM GMT
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