The UN had its chance to play an important role in
what is now known as the global war on terrorism. But the UN has proven on many
occasions to be all talk and no action. At least no effective, positive, productive
action. Sternly worded resolutions have no effect on heavily-armed dictators.
As a sovereign nation, the U.S. does not need to ask permission or get a
consensus from any other country or countries before defending itself; however,
when time permits, most other countries expect to hear some justification when
Country A bombs Country B.
Lately the UN is famous for only one thing, and that is the Oil-for-Food scandal. As
more information is revealed about the scandal, it is beginning to appear that the UN is
merely a conference of corrupt officials from corrupt little countries all over the
world. If that's the case, the UN cannot possibly accomplish anything that
benefits everyone in the long run.
The UN is dangerous because its ultimate goal is a single world-wide socialist government.
Information about the United Nations gun control efforts -- that is, the elimination of private firearms
ownership -- can be found on this page.
The UN Earth Summit of 2002 is discussed
on this page.
The UN Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is discussed
on this page.
The United Nations IPCC Report on Global Warming is covered
on this page.
Information about the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali
is on its own page.
Your U.N. at Work:
The General Assembly of the United Nations voted this week to elect Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann as its new president.
Readers with a long memory will recall Father D'Escoto (he's a Catholic priest) as Nicaragua's foreign minister during the
Sandinista regime of the 1980s. He's also the winner of the 1985 Lenin Prize. Only at the U.N. does that count
as a recommendation.
U.N.'s Anti-Poverty Program Wants Unlimited
Spending Power. The United Nations Development Program, the U.N.'s anti-poverty agency, which
systematically ignored its own financial rules and regulations while funneling millions of dollars to North
Korea, wants to give its chief operating officer the right to make out discretionary checks of unlimited
amounts, without normal budgetary approval. That's up from the current limit of $50,000 which can
be dispersed without regulatory oversight.
Moral
Poverty at the UN: The United Nations' World Food Summit held in Rome in 2002 to discuss how to
cut world hunger in half by 2015 came under heavy criticism for the lavish feasts held during that
conference. … The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, which planned this year's food summit,
provided political cover for two of the cruelest dictators in the world today.
The U.N. Monkeys
Around. There is a concerted advocacy campaign underway across several disciplines aimed at
knocking human beings off our pedestal of moral exceptionalism and redefining us as merely another animal
in the forest. … The point of this ideological drive is to degrade our perceived self-worth so much
that we will readily sacrifice human prosperity and welfare "to save the planet" or "for the animals," while
undercutting the power of theistic religion in general, and Judeo-Christian moral teaching in particular, to
influence public policies.
U.S. Must Give U.N. the
Boot. I've demanded it before, to no avail. Now, the U.S. should again consider getting
out of the U.N., and the U.N. out of the U.S. What better timing than in a transitional election year?
Nothing of lasting importance ever happens at the U.N. Why throw good money after bad? The straw that broke
this camel's back has been the U.N. refusal (or inability) to do anything about the brutal dictatorship in
Zimbabwe….
Dems Endorse Expansion of U.N.
Power. Our media are running stories about the planks in the new 2008 Democratic Party platform
but they've missed a big one — expansion of the power of the United Nations, and especially more
U.S. involvement in U.N.-authorized military operations. In another bow to the world organization,
the platform indirectly endorses Senator Barack Obama's controversial pro-U.N. Global Poverty Act. "It
is time to make the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015,
America's goals as well," the document says. It leaves out the estimated cost — $845 billion over
13 years.
The Editor asks...
What is "extreme" poverty, and how do you cut it in half? More importantly, what part
of the US Constitution authorizes the eradication of poverty in other countries?
How to Account for the United Nations?
In February 2007, Mayor Michael Bloomberg — worried by a statement issued by the Secretary General's office
speculating that if the United Nations couldn't expand its historic New York headquarters, it might look for
a permanent home elsewhere — met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to argue for keeping the UN in
Gotham. Losing the UN would be a "disaster," Bloomberg said….
'We
Inturrupt This Program'. Some of the monks wept as they told the foreigners their stories.
They said they'd been held in the temple for weeks while the Tibetan capital was jolted by the violent protests
that had finally made the world news. Naturally the UN's "Human Rights" Council — long
dominated by exemplars of freedom like Cuba, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam and
Zimbabwe — declined to debate the Chinese clampdown on the demonstrations.
So Popular and So
Spineless. Welcome to a world of too much Russian and Chinese power. I am neither a
Russia-basher nor a China-basher. But there was something truly filthy about Russia's and China's
vetoes of the American-led U.N. Security Council effort to impose targeted sanctions on Robert Mugabe's
ruling clique in Zimbabwe.
The UN fails again.
Zimbabwe
says sanctions failure a victory over racism. Zimbabwe on Saturday [7/12/2008] welcomed the failure of a
Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolution to impose sanctions over its violent presidential elections, calling it a
victory over racism and meddling in its affairs. Russia and China on Friday vetoed the resolution, which would have
imposed an arms embargo on the southern African country and financial and travel restrictions on President Robert Mugabe
and 13 other officials.
More information about
Zimbabwe.
World
Environment Day calls for end to CO2 addiction. The United Nations urged the
world on Thursday [6/4/2008] to kick the habit of producing carbon dioxide, saying everyone must act to fight
climate change. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said global warming was becoming the era's defining
issue and would hurt rich and poor.
The Editor says...
It's only natural that he would say such a thing, since he has so much to gain. In reality, carbon
dioxide is not addictive inasmuch as it is not something habitually consumed. Inflammatory
rhetoric can only go so far — I hope everyone recognizes this as unmitigated propaganda.
This sums up the global warming issue pretty well...
Baby, Baby It's a Cold
World. Global warming has nothing to do with climate or science. What it is all about is the great,
historic class struggle between working people and the ruling classes. Global warming is a great excuse for a massive
expansion of government power. That, not science, is why the overlords, from the New York Times to the United Nations
to Al Gore, so heartily embrace it. The U.N. thinks global warming is a perfect reason for the U.N. to be
transformed into a world government.
More information about
global warming.
U.N.
thermostat to be set higher. Everyone complains about climate change, and the United Nations is
finally doing something about it — on Friday [8/1/2008], the temperature inside U.N. headquarters
in New York will rise by 5 degrees. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations' self-professed
environmental secretary-general, ordered the "In-House Climate Change Initiative" to save energy, cut
carbon emissions and try to mitigate climate change.
Obama
Supports Global Tax From United Nations. Barack Obama and his liberal allies such as Senator
Biden have signed on to a bill that would allow the U.N. to tax America (and Americans) an estimated
$845 billion over the next 13 years. Obama's plan represents perhaps the greatest affront
to our national sovereignty since the War of 1812.
The UN Stops Pretending.
Several years ago, when the notoriously anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights Committee was replaced by the
Human Rights Council, there were some who actually harbored hopes that the Jewish state might get a bit more
of a fair shake. That that was just wishful naivete became painfully evident this month when the "human
rights" apparatus in Turtle Bay and its Geneva outpost (where the Council sits) revealed its true colors by
selecting two outspoken Israel-bashers to serve in significant positions.
Human-rights farce:
The U.N. Human Rights Council was supposed to improve upon the general discredit of its predecessor, the U.N. Commission
on Human Rights. Instead, two years after its creation, it continues much the same: Verbiage in homage to human rights
is issued at great length while the council excuses the world's worst human-rights abusers. It then proceeds to target
Western countries which mostly uphold human rights.
Religious speech debated.
Late last week, I attended a Capitol Hill briefing about an obscure United Nations resolution on "defamation of
religions" that some call the "soft jihad." … The chief topic of discussion was a U.N. Commission on Human Rights
resolution, backed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, that addresses "the campaign to defame religions and
the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities" since Sept. 11, 2001. Freedom of expression, the
resolution says, would be "subject to limitations" to guard the "respect of the rights and reputations of others;
protection of national security or of public order, public health or morals and respect for religions and beliefs."
U.N. Urged to Stop 'Defamation of Islam' Campaign.
Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition urging top United Nations officials to oppose a drive by
Islamic governments to outlaw the ?defamation? of Islam. Critics say the move is aimed at shutting down
legitimate debate and restricting the freedom to share other faiths.
U.N. scheme to make Christians criminals.
Dozens of nations dominated by Islam are pressing the United Nations to adopt an anti-"defamation" plan that
would make Christians criminals under international law, according to a United States organization that has
launched a campaign to defend freedom of religion worldwide.
United Nations Assaults Free Speech —
Moves To Protect Islam. The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) is an Islam-Marxist-dominated
entity that is working to criminalize or suppress any public criticism of Islam around the world. In a
recently-concluded session, the Council ruled that any criticism of Islam in the Council proceedings was to
be off limits.
Move the Useless Notion to
Canada. The United Nations has become a useless notion occupying valuable real estate on the East
River. Why do we put up with this consortium of petty dictators and corrupt oligarchies? The recent
election of the new president of the General Assembly confirms my suspicion that to achieve success in the United
Nations, one must hate the United States.
The Editor says...
Why not move the UN to Venezuela, Nicaragua or Iran? Maybe the problems
in Zimbabwe would get some attention if the
UN moved there.
Simply UN-bearable:
Taking [insolence] from the UN is hard at the best of times, given it's the most monumentally corrupt and ineffective
political body since the court of Louis XVI. It elects representatives from some of the world's most
vicious, totalitarian governments to its human rights council, where they issue proclamations so anti-Semitic
Joseph Goebbels is nudging Hitler in hell and grinning. Its oil-for-food program ensured Saddam Hussein
and his psychopathic spawn never ran short of high-performance automobiles or fresh porn during the
international embargo against Iraqi oil.
UN-Believable. When the
so-called mainstream media don't want you to know something, they simply spike the story — meaning they just
don't cover it. … First there's the strange case of Doudou Diene, the United Nations "Special Rapporteur" on "contemporary
forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance." He's really a lawyer from Senegal,
traveling first-class on a U.N. ticket, and he arrived in the U.S. May 19 for a three-week "fact-finding trip."
The United Nations Will
Investigate America for Racism. As an African American politician is set to assume for the first time in the
country's history the leadership of a major political party, a Geneva-based United Nations human rights investigator plans
to come here next week to investigate whether racism plays a role in the presidential campaign, according to a statement
released yesterday [5/16/2008].
The Editor says...
Racism has nothing to do with
my opposition to Barack Obama. I don't care if
he's black, but I do care if he's a Socialist, or a Marxist, or worse. Will the UN investigate Jeremiah
Wright's all-black church and Obama's membership in it? And what if racism does "play a role" in
politics? What is the UN going to do about it?
Theater of the Absurd:
We're under investigation — by the U.N.. While hundreds of thousands are dying due to the callous
indifference of the military junta in Burma and millions are fleeing oppression and hunger in Robert Mugabe's brutal Zimbabwe,
the U.N.'s farcical Human Rights Council (HRC) is focusing its attention elsewhere — the United States, the freest
nation on the face of the earth.
UN Hatemongers to
Investigate U.S. "Racism". The United Nations Special Rapporteur on "contemporary forms of racism, racial
discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance", Dr. Doudou Diéne, has been invited by the U.S. government … to
gather first-hand information on racism in America. … This unwelcome visitor is hardly an objective reporter or
impartial judge of racial conditions anywhere. … His cultural and religious biases have led to his obsession with
Islamophobia, which he has called "the most serious form of religious defamation."
Texas still plans to execute killer
despite U.N. order. Texas will go ahead with the scheduled Aug. 5 execution of Houston
rapist-killer Jose Medellin despite Wednesday's United Nations world court order for a stay, a spokesman
for Gov. Rick Perry said.
General
Assembly Approves UN Budget. The General Assembly approved a two-year U.N. budget of
$4.17 billion Saturday [11/22/2007], with the United States casting the only "no" vote because of
objections to funding for a follow-up to a conference it considered anti-Israel.
In Burma, a
U.N. Promise Not Kept. Who steps in when government abuses or neglects its people? Nearly
three years ago, the United Nations announced an answer to that question: It would. At a summit
celebrating the organization's 60th birthday, 171 nations agreed that they would intervene, forcefully if
necessary, if a state failed to protect its own people.
Kick Burma Out of
the U.N.. The United Nations this week said the refusal of Burma's government to allow workers into the
country's devastated agricultural region was unprecedented in the history of humanitarian relief. The human
catastrophe produced by Burma's refusal to permit aid in the wake of Cyclone Nargis has stunned the senses of a world
that has watched this spectacle for a week.
[Why expel only Burma? What's the difference between Burma
and Zimbabwe, or Cuba, or North Korea?]
Expenses
At U.N. Balloon 25 Percent. Despite long-standing efforts by successive U.S. administrations to
rein in U.N. spending, the United Nations this month presented its top donors with a request for nearly
$1.1 billion in additional funds over the next two years — boosting current U.N. expenses
by 25 percent and marking the global body's highest-ever administrative budget, according to internal
U.N. memos.
U.N. headquarters renovation
launched in New York. Officials in blue U.N. hard hats broke ground on Monday for a temporary
building at the United Nations, launching a $1.9 billion renovation project to make U.N. headquarters
safer, more comfortable and greener.
UN
breaks ground for headquarters overhaul, greening. The renovation will take at least five years
to complete, which will mean the relocation of most of the 4,500 UN personnel to office spaces already rented
in New York City. The costs will be 1.8 billion dollars, supported by UN members as long-term, low
interest loans. It will involve the relocation of hundreds of journalists from world media covering the
UN to temporary space office within the compound, unlike UN staff who will have to work in buildings away from
the headquarters.
Democrats
eye restoring funds to U.N. agency. Congress may have found a way to fund the U.N. Population
Fund for the first time in seven years, with many lawmakers anticipating that the next U.S. president may have
a different view of an organization accused by conservatives of abetting coerced abortion in the developing
world. The House Appropriations state, foreign operations and related programs subcommittee last week
appropriated $60 million for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) as part of a $600 million package
for international family planning and reproductive health for fiscal 2009.
U.N. food program
seeks $500M. A United Nations food program has issued an emergency appeal for donations as the
amount of food aid sent abroad from the United States is plunging. The World Food Program, which feeds
about 73 million people worldwide, is seeking funding to close a $500 million gap caused by global
spikes in food and fuel prices, the United Nations said in a release issued in New York.
U.N.
Reformer (Really). More than one American has tried to make the United Nations live up to its
original ideals — Pat Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, John Bolton. We'd add to that distinguished
list the name of Mark Wallace, an ambassador to the U.S. mission at Turtle Bay who resigned yesterday having
tried for two years to make the U.N. a more transparent place.
Ex-U.N. official sentenced to
8 years for corruption. A former U.N. procurement official was sentenced to 8 years and one
month in prison on Tuesday for helping a friend secure at least $50 million in contracts in return for
financial favors including a luxury apartment.
UNHRC
appointment infuriates Israel. The United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday [3/26/2008]
appointed American Jewish law professor Richard A. Falk — who has compared Israel to the
Nazis — as special investigator on Israeli actions in the territories for a six-year term.
U.S., Israel wary of second
U.N. anti-racism event. The U.N. 2001 anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, provoked
a walkout by the United States and Israel, with both nations saying it had been overtaken by anti-Semitism
and some in Congress claiming it had cemented the world body's shame in the eyes of America.
Waste, Fraud and UN Headquarters: The
UN is embarking on a multi-billion construction project and the timing could not be better for those who like to
waste taxpayer dollars. … The project is the renovation of the United Nations headquarters in New York City
and the building is a metaphor for the UN itself. It is outdated, falling apart, and no longer useful.
It has never had a major renovation, is full of asbestos, and is energy inefficient. And while it won't
pass a fire inspection, it is one of the only buildings in New York where smokers are still allowed to
light up.
The Oil Connection: It's
interesting that Hillary Clinton not only was behind the formation of the oil-for-food program, but that it was a
direct contact with an agent of Saddam that accomplished the task. So, fast forward a few years. Baghdad
has fallen, the doors have been kicked open, and the oil-for-food program has become the oil-for-food scandal. What
seems amazing now is not only the extent of the corruption, but how little most Americans even know about it. The
left is often proud of its hatred for Enron and the $1.5 billion in corruption it represents. Rightly
so — but they so easily excuse nearly 40 billion in corruption in a single UN program.
Volvo to Pay $19.6M in Oil-For-Food
Case. AB Volvo will return nearly $9 million in profits that two of its subsidiaries made
under the oil-for-food program in Iraq plus pay fines totaling $11 million in order to avoid prosecution,
the truck maker said Thursday. The company said it has entered agreements with the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice, resolving issues related to the oil-for-food program.
Iraq lodges $10bn lawsuit over
'Oil-for-Food scam'. The Iraqi Government is suing dozens of companies for $10 billion
(£5 billion) after they allegedly defrauded the country's citizens out of food and medical
provisions during Saddam Hussein's rule. Iraq has hired Maney and Purrington, a law firm from Texas, to
sue 70 corporations such as Chevron, the oil company, GlaxoSmithKline, the drugs group, BNP Paribas, the
French bank, and Chrsyler, the car manufacturer, for allegedly paying bribes to the dictator to secure
business contracts under the United Nations Oil-for-Food programme.
Comrade
Sid: spy who siphoned off $500 million from Iraq Oil-for-Food deal. A UN official
who held a pivotal post in the Oil-for-Food programme for Iraq has been exposed by a defector as a Russian
spy who diverted almost half a billion dollars to top Russian officials in "one of the richest heists in
world history".
Crying Wolfowitz
while the United Nations bankrolls dictators. For two of Paul Wolfowitz's most prominent
critics, Mark Malloch Brown and Ad Melkert, the war over the World Bank presidency could not have come
at a better time. Whatever else the ousting of Wolfowitz has achieved, it has done plenty to distract
from the North Korea Cash-for-Kim scandal that just four months ago was threatening to engulf the United
Nations agency piloted for the past eight years first by Malloch Brown and now largely by Melkert.
UNder the
Law. In what surely qualifies as the single-most-promising United Nations reform effort to
date, federal prosecutors in New York, jointly with the New York District Attorney, have just announced
the indictment of the man who ran the U.N.'s former Oil-for-Food program: Benon Sevan. Charged
with conspiring to commit fraud and taking close to $160,000 in bribes related to Oil-for-Food deals,
Sevan, if convicted, could face a prison sentence of up to 50 years.
Last Stand for American Sovereignty. The
U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), now being pushed by the Bush Administration for a quick vote,
is already starting to get rave reviews from the press, with the Sacramento Bee saying that protecting the
oceans of the world could be Bush's "legacy." The message to Bush is that he should go out as a liberal
and he may salvage some of his reputation. But he will lose what is left of his conservative base.
Americans Pay for Emerging World Government.
In its new Human Development Report calling for another $86 billion in aid to the rest of the world,
supposedly to fight the effects of climate change, the United Nations acts distressed that people in "rich"
countries like the U.S. don't take the theory of man-made global warming more seriously. Its
answer — and this is actually spelled out in the report — is that too much "editorial
balance" in the media has prevented "informed debate" about the need for "urgent action" in the form of higher
taxes on energy.
Blue Helmet Bigotry: As
predictable as the sun rising in the east, the United Nations has voted to assault religious liberty.
Islam, however, is to be protected from criticism since Muslims are said to be under vicious attack in the
West. The offending resolution, which denounces the "defamation of religions," had its genesis in the
UN Human Rights Council, created in 2006 to replace the long-discredited Commission on Human Rights.
Your U.N.
at Work. The public housing in question includes the notorious 1930s-era St. Bernard complex,
which was already in a bad state before Katrina hit and an even worse state after it. The local housing
authority intends to replace the complex with mixed-income housing developments, and in the meantime is granting
housing vouchers to former tenants. But some of the new housing will be offered at —
horrors! — a "market rate," to which the U.N. naturally objects. We don't remember the
U.N.'s human-rights czars being quite so vocal when Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe evicted 200,000 people
from their homes in 2005.
UN Enters the War on Terror — On Whose Side?
After years of speaking out of both sides of its mouth on the issue of terrorism, the United Nations has finally
staked out a clear position: Any negative portrayal of Islam will not be tolerated. The General
Assembly has just passed a resolution entitled "Combating Defamation of Religions" which deals exclusively
with perceived slights committed against the Islamic faith.
UN tells Kosovo to fly a new flag.
Kosovo must give up the black-on-red, double-headed eagle of the Albanian national flag and reflect the multi-ethnicity
of the region. The province, most of whose population is ethnic Albanian, has used the flag since NATO
drove out Serb forces in 1999.
UN celebrates disability treaty. The
UN is celebrating the coming into force of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) —
a landmark agreement that aims to give the world's 650m disabled people full equality.
Repairs would
empty U.N.. Authorities are considering emptying the massive U.N. headquarters
building for at least three years to get a long-delayed renovation project back on track and
on budget, according to people who have been briefed on the plan. Member states' deliberations
and security considerations have left the $1.8 billion renovation a year behind schedule, with
every month adding roughly $10 million to the overall cost of the project.
The Editor says...
Here's a better idea: Spend that $1.8 billion moving the UN to Paris or Cairo or Havana.
Battle for Arctic oil hinges on
UN panel. As Canada unveils plans for a military base and Russia drops a titanium flag on the
seabed, lawyers say the real centre of action is an obscure United Nations-hosted body known as the
Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.
U.N. May Give Black Gold at North Pole to Russia.
The failure by the U.S. State Department to cite historical evidence that American explorers actually discovered
the North Pole, in the wake of Russian claims to the oil-rich region, has had the desired effect. Our media
are declaring that the matter has to be resolved by the United Nations. One writer, Eric
Margolis, even proposes that the U.N. take complete control of the region.
The U.N.'s
Human-Rights Sham: The removal of the diseased commission two years ago was heralded by U.N.
officials as "the dawn of a new era." Its replacement was designed to have stricter standards for
membership, and rules to prevent politicized voting. But such safeguards were neutered by the time the new
Human Rights Council was approved, and the results are that the council is no better than its predecessor.
Free Press Stifled
at United Nations, Reporters Say. Reporters covering the United Nations complain that the organization,
whose Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls for freedom of the press, has been trying to stifle reporters
covering the U.N. itself. This month, for example, U.N. officials reportedly seized videotapes from journalists
who recorded the site of a U.N. helicopter crash in Nepal. In addition, the group Reporters Without Borders says the
U.N. yielded to pressure from certain member countries in refusing to recognize "Freedom of Expression Day."
The UN Climate Change Conference in Bali
This entire section has been moved to a page of its own.
Playing on both sides of the fence:
It's an endless cycle! The conflict in Darfur is either the cause or the effect of
climate change, or maybe it's both! It just depends on where you get your information.
Darfur
conflict hurting environment. Decades of drought helped trigger Darfur's violence as rival
groups fought over scarce water and arable land. Now, experts fear the war and its refugee crisis
are making the environment even worse, leaving the land increasingly uninhabitable and intensifying
tensions with no end to the drought in sight.
Climate change
behind Darfur killing: UN's Ban. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter
in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an
article published Saturday. "The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part
from climate change," Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.
A Disarming Election:
Iran and Syria lead the U.N. Disarmament Commission. On April 9, 2007 there was a United Nations
believe-it-or-not moment extraordinaire. At the same time that Iran's President Ahmadinejad declared his country was
now capable of industrial-scale uranium enrichment, the U.N. reelected Iran as a vice chairman of the U.N. Disarmament
Commission. Yes Ripley, the very U.N. body charged with promoting nuclear nonproliferation installed in a senior
position the state that the Security Council recently declared violated its nonproliferation resolutions.
The
Last Best Dope of Mankind. And you thought the United Nations had a serious double-speak problem
before? Look at what happened yesterday, as the world body was forced to backtrack from an
official transcript that sent alarm bells ringing around the world. The document, released Tuesday
[10/16/2007], quoted Syria's U.N. ambassador as confirming that the site attacked by Israeli jets last
month was, in fact, a nuclear facility.
Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe:
are you laughing yet?. If you randomly drew 100 names from the phone book, those people would be a
better guide to how to draw the many debatable and contentious rights-respecting lines that need drawing than
anything likely to emerge from the UN or "the international community".
10
More Differences Between Liberals And Conservatives. Conservatives believe that the United Nations
is a corrupt, anti-American, anti-Semitic talking shop that is largely hostile to American interests and is too
incompetent to be much of use in areas where it's not.
Congo ruler runs up £207,000
hotel bill. In two short visits to New York last year the leader of one of Africa's poorest
countries spent $400,000 (£207,000) on hotel bills as members of his entourage drank Cristal champagne
and charged tens of thousands of dollars of room service to accounts paid by the Republic of Congo's mission
to the United Nations.
Editor's note:
This "Congo ruler" link goes to a 404 page. Thanks to a reader by the name of Muscle Daddy for
reporting the broken link. The only other source for the story (that I have found so far)
is this site, which requires registration
to read the whole article. (Not recommended.)
U.N. worker
charged in immigration scam. A United Nations employee was arrested Monday on
charges that he and two others used U.N. stationery in a visa fraud scheme, prosecutors said.
Vyacheslav Manokhin, a U.N. employee based in Manhattan, was accused of helping numerous
non-U.S. citizens enter the country illegally by providing fraudulent documents so they could
obtain visas to attend conferences that either did not exist or which they did not attend.
Despair at UN over selection
of 'faceless' Ban Ki-moon as general secretary. Senior officials at the United Nations expressed
despair yesterday at the prospect of Kofi Annan being succeeded as secretary general by Ban Ki-moon, the South
Korean foreign minister. "The mood among staff is glum," one of the officials said. "We are not
very excited about the outcome."
UN is rotten to
the core. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is a prime example, I wrote last week, of
Peter's Principle — "an individual in a hierarchical organization rises to the level of his
incompetence" — at work. Now, just weeks before his departure from the United Nations, Annan
revealed how utterly depraved his politics are when he stated in a BBC interview Iraq is now worse than it was
under Saddam Hussein. Annan is of course the ethically void Secretary-General under whose watch the
Oil-for-Food program, with Iraq's old regime, turned out to be the worst financial scam in the history
of the United Nations.
U.N. Oil-For-Food Sentence Reduced.
A judge has reduced the sentence of South Korean businessman Tongsun Park, who accepted more than $2.5 million to
secretly work on Iraq's behalf to influence the United Nations oil-for-food program.
Obama's Iraqi Oil for
Food connection. Rezko's relationship with Barack Obama goes back to at least 1990, when Obama's
law firm did work relating to a Rezko housing development. Rezko was a key early-money fund raiser in
Obama's state Senate campaigns and his failed run at the US Congress. In June 2005, when the mansion
was purchased, Rezko was widely known to be under federal investigation. Rezko also is a key fundraiser
for Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich.
Former Russian Spy Says
Government Stole $500 Million From U.N.'s Oil-For-Food Program in Iraq. Sergei
Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an
operation that helped Saddam's regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the
program — and allow Russia to skim profits. Tretyakov, former deputy head of
intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names, but sticks mainly
to code names.
UN denies helping Zimbabwe
diamond smuggling. The United Nations said today an independent probe was being conducted into
whether UN vehicles were used to smuggle diamonds from a mine in Zimbabwe. Spokeswoman Michele Montas
confirmed that Larry Johnson, the deputy legal counsel, had received a letter alleging that at least one
vehicle from the UN Development Fund (UNDP) was involved in the smuggling.
The case of Sanjaya Bahel:
Former U.N. official convicted. A
former United Nations official was convicted Thursday of charges that he helped a friend secure $100 million
in U.N. contracts in exchange for a huge discount on two luxury Manhattan apartments and cash.
U.N. sees failings in probe of graft.
U.N. officials acknowledge their internal investigation failed to produce evidence against a U.N. procurement officer
who was convicted of taking kickbacks in federal court last week, and say U.N. oversight procedures still must be improved.
'UN is human rights
nightmare'. The UN's Human Rights Commission has been told it is a hypocritical and prejudiced
body which does nothing to help millions of people in need, due to its obsessive focus on demonizing Israel.
In a speech given during a session of the Human Rights Commission on March 23rd, Hillel Neuer, Director of
UN Watch, delivered a scathing attack on the commission's track record, describing it as a "human rights
nightmare."
Texas
oilman Wyatt sentenced in corruption scandal. Texas oilman Oscar Wyatt Jr. was
sentenced to a year in prison Tuesday [11/27/2007] for his role in corrupting the UN
oil-for-food program, winning leniency from a judge who cited his military service
during World War II and his many good deeds during his lifetime.
Update:
Oscar Wyatt reports to prison in
Beaumont. Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt began his one-year prison sentence shortly before noon
today when he reported to a federal prison in Beaumont. … Wyatt pleaded guilty on Oct. 1 to a single
count of conspiring to make illegal payments for Iraqi oil under the United Nations' Oil-for-Food program.
The minimum security federal prison in Beaumont, part of a federal prison complex, is the closest to Wyatt's
Houston home.
The Editor says...
Having lived in Beaumont for most of the 1970s, I can tell you that Beaumont is a great place for a
prison. A prison would be an improvement in almost any area of the city, even if only as a
reminder to all who pass by, that plenty of prison space is available.
El Paso Corp. settles oil-for-food
scam case. Houston pipeline giant El Paso Corp. will pay more than $7.7 million to settle
claims that it helped the former Iraqi regime receive millions in kickbacks through a U.N.-sponsored humanitarian
program.
Houston men plead guilty in oil-for-food
case. Houston oilman David Chalmers, accused of funneling illegal payments to Saddam Hussein's regime
at at time when Iraq was the target of strict economic sanctions, pleaded guilty today to a conspiracy charge.
Wyatt Pleads Guilty in
Oil-For-Food Case. Texas oilman Oscar Wyatt Jr. pleaded guilty Monday to a federal conspiracy
charge, abruptly ending his trial by admitting he approved a $200,000 payment directly to an Iraqi bank
account knowing it violated the rules of the U.N. oil-for-food program. Under the plea agreement, Wyatt,
83, will be sentenced to 18 to 24 months in prison and forfeit $11 million.
Iraq's oil-for-food scandal
perpetrators go unpunished. Slightly more than a year after a United Nations inquiry discovered
a staggering level of graft by officials and corporations worldwide in buying cheap oil and selling goods to
Iraq experts warn the great majority of alleged perpetrators are escaping scot-free.
Oil for Hussein. As
front pages report every bit of bad news on the Iraqi war front in bold type, newspapers are giving precious
little ink to what could be the biggest kickback scheme in world history. Call it: How Saddam
Hussein siphoned $10.1 billion for his regime — thanks to the United Nations.
Annan orders probe of U.N.
office. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, reacting to an article in The Washington Times, asked
U.N. investigators yesterday [12/13/2006] to look into claims of fraud, favoritism and intimidation inside the
U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Annan
laments oil-for-food charges mar his legacy. Secretary-General Kofi Annan lamented on Tuesday
[12/19/2006] that his 10 years as U.N. leader may end up being remembered only for the oil-for-food program
for Iraq, saying blame for a financial scandal was misdirected. One of his top regrets as secretary-general,
he said, was that the allegations of U.N. mismanagement of the $64 billion Iraqi humanitarian program had
been "exploited to undermine the organisation."
What Is
Annanism? Just as with other such ethicists as a lip-biting Bill Clinton or creased-browed Jimmy
Carter, [Kofi] Annan is as publicly acclaimed as he is privately ignored. We like such itinerant
moralists — more when they are off the job than on, and always in retrospect rather than
contemporaneously. As we watch them hedge, we somehow feel apologetic rather than outraged over
their latest deception.
Uganda terrorizes its own citizens under the auspices
of UN gun control mandate. For months now, Ugandan army troops have been garrisoned in the
northeast part of the country under orders to disarm the local populace ... But in its effort to
"disarm," the Ugandan army, supported by tanks and helicopter gunships, is burning down villages,
sexually torturing men, raping women, and plundering what few possessions the tribespeople own. Tens
of thousands of victims have been turned into refugees.
The
United Nations abortion dilemma: Let's briefly review two contradictory United Nations (U.N.)
talking points. (1) Abortion is a matter of "women's rights;" (2) Killing a "girl child"
in the womb is "the most extreme form of violence against women." To hold both of these beliefs at the
same time means to live with constant cognitive dissonance. It doesn't take a genius to realize that
the U.N. is on the horns of a dilemma; that is, the two alternatives are mutually exclusive.
U.S.
women doing fine without International Violence Against Women Act. Feminists have
cooked up a new plan to raid the U.S. Treasury for more feminist pork. They want Congress to
pass the International Violence Against Women Act. … Who better to introduce the act than
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., the leading advocate of ratification of the United Nations Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women? Biden never saw a U.N. treaty
or a radical feminist spending bill that he didn't like.
Re-brand global warming as economic
woe: U.N. draft. A fight against global warming could work better if viewed as part of the world's
economic problems and not a purely environmental headache, a draft United Nations report says. The report, due for
release in Bangkok on May 4, says economic policies for everything from forestry to insurance can have big spinoffs
in limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Media Promote Global Warming Fraud. On
the matter of global intervention to stop global warming, there seems to be no need for scientific evidence to
justify what is shaping up as a global carbon tax of 35 cents a gallon of gas on the American people.
Our media want the public to believe that the same organization that gave us the oil-for-food scandal can be
trusted on its dire predictions of calamity from alleged man-made global warming.
Scandal number N+1
United Nations Dictator's Program:
Saddam Hussein managed to pull off the $100 billion Oil for Food scam right under the noses of the United
Nations officials charged with administering it. Now another dictator with nuclear ambitions has succeeded
in a similar trick, this time manipulating the United Nations Development Program in North Korea.
Scandal number N+2
Mystery Surfaces Over Apartment of Kofi Annan. The
apartment was where Mr. Annan and his wife lived before 1997, when he became secretary-general. The
Roosevelt Island home is part of an estate of low-rent state-regulated housing. For years, the Annans
saved considerable sums by occupying an apartment meant to help financially strapped low- to moderate-income
New York families.
Kofi Annan Sidesteps Questions About Roosevelt Island
Apartment. In his last U.N. press conference, Secretary-General Annan yesterday [12/19/2006]
sidestepped a question about how the lease of a sought-after low-income residence he once lived in came to be
held by a member of his family.
Scandal number N+3
U.N. Official Uses Two Birthdates.
Kamil Idris, has for almost 24 years been using two different birthdates, nine years apart. In recently
amending the discrepancy, Idris has changed his current age in U.N. records from 61 to 52. That
would be bizarre in any context, but it is an alarming discovery at the World Intellectual Property Organization,
or WIPO, a U.N. agency with an annual budget of more than $200 million that is supposed to be one of the
world's great bastions of accurate record-keeping.
Scandal number N+4
Head of UN patent
agency to quit after row over alleged falsified documents. The head of the U.N. patent agency is
to leave his post a year early, officials said Thursday [12/6/2007]. Kamil Idris, who was due to step down
from his post as director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2009, had faced pressure to
resign after using an apparently false birth date to get jobs and win promotions.
Scandal number N+5
Bribery, bid-rigging found in
U.N. peacekeeping contracts. A United Nations task force has uncovered a pervasive pattern of
corruption and mismanagement involving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for fuel, food,
construction and other materials used by U.N. peacekeeping operations, which are in the midst of
their largest expansion in 15 years.
Scandal number N+6
U.N.'s World Food Program Sitting on Cash Stockpile.
Just weeks before it announced the onset of a global food crisis and the urgent need for donors to provide at least $775 million
in additional funding, the World Food Program was sitting on a cash and near-cash stockpile of more than $1.22 billion.
Scandal number N+7
Scandal
Central: UN Corruption Seethes On. The United Nations likes to sell itself as a mentor of
good governance. But the recent deep-sixing of a damning in-house report suggests it might more honestly
advertise itself as an example of how to foster bad governance — and get away with it. The
report in question, labeled "strictly confidential," centers on alleged transgressions by longtime UN staffer
Guido Bertucci, the director of — what else? — the UN good-governance office, the Division
of Public Administration and Development Management.
Journalist Who Exposes U.N. Corruption
Disappears From Google. How big do you have to be to earn the wrath of the United Nations and
Internet giant Google? If you're journalist Matthew Lee, all it takes are some critical articles and a
scrappy little Web site. Lee is the editor-in-chief, Webmaster and pretty much the only reporter for
Inner City Press, a pint-sized Internet news operation that's taken on Goliath-sized entities like Citigroup
since 1987.
Requiem for a welterweight: The
concern swirls around this heavily subsidized Roosevelt Island apartment, which was passed on to his brother
and his family after the dapper little mouthpiece moved into his UN supplied multi-million dollar mansion, where
we contribute some 40% of its operating costs, all courtesy of the monies we shovel into the slavering maw of that
failing body of abject sycophants, bandits, and tin pot tyrants. And the main question centers on whether
Kobina Annan, some sort of an ambassador to Ghana, and his wife, will remain on our public dole forever.
Kofi and U.N. 'Ideals'.
When Mr. Annan was named Secretary General 10 years ago, he did so as the U.S.-backed candidate of
reform. Jesse Helms, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Mr. Annan that "if
you choose to be an agent of real and deep-seated change, you will find many supporters — and
even allies — here in the U.S. Congress." Senator Helms's expectations were not met. Seven
years later — thanks to U.S. military action that Mr. Annan did everything in his power to
prevent — we learned that he had presided over the greatest bribery scheme in history,
known as Oil for Food.
United Nation's Chief Kofi Annan's Legacy of
Failure: United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan delivered his swan song last week at the
Truman Presidential Library in Missouri. It was a thinly veiled parting shot at U.S. foreign policy
delivered by an embittered U.N. leader seething with self-righteous indignation and resentment.
Annan's Missouri speech will go down in history as one of the most blatant assaults on a U.S.
administration by a serving U.N. official.
UNder strain:
In recent years, the United Nations has often gone out of its way to avoid getting involved in the world's
trouble spots. It ignored genocide in Darfur. Pulled out of Iraq in 2003. Done nothing
to stem Iran's nuclear ambitions. Can an organization this compromised do much to improve things?
Should
America Pull out of the United Nations? I once worked at the United Nations and have vowed that
someday I will write about what a soul-scorching experience it was — especially for someone who was and still
is a white Jewish-American feminist and Zionist. I had to absorb the most virulent, almost surreal hatred
because of who I am and for the views that I hold. This happened long before I was perceived to have
crossed any political aisle.
General Assembly OKs U.N.
Renovation. The General Assembly finally gave a green light to start a $1.9 billion
renovation of the U.N.'s landmark headquarters in New York after years of delays, a move welcomed
Saturday [12/23/2006] by outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Answer Chavez. America has seen
this before, seen Krushchev bang his shoe on the table and say "We will bury you." We grew up watching
our flag being burned on TV. So it's tempting to think this is part of a meaningless continuum. But
the temperature of the world is very high, and maybe we're not stuck in a continuum but barreling down a dark
corridor. The problem with heated words now is that it's not the old world anymore. In the old world,
incompetent governments dragged cannons through the mud to set up a ragged front. Now every nut and nation
wants, has or is trying to develop nukes.
Tolerating
the intolerable. Last week the impotence of the world Jewish community was on display for all to
see. For all the talk of how the Jews control the media, the banks and the American government, a man
whose declared intention it is to wipe Israel off the map was treated as an international dignitary in the
city that contains more Jews than any other on earth. ... So now the world Jewish community must contend
with the sad truth that 60 years after the Holocaust, a man can declare himself the new exterminator of
the Jews and still be treated with respect.
United
Nations 'army' proposed. International rapid reaction force could be deployed within 48 hours
of a UN green light.
UN Labels on US Parks. U.N. designations
such as "World Heritage Site" and "Biosphere Reserve" are being placed on dozens of U.S parks and
monuments, including Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty and Yellowstone National Park.
And That's the Way It Is.
To my great surprise, I received a form letter from Walter Cronkite inviting me to contribute to the
Campaign for Global Change, sponsored by the World Federalist Association. Walter Cronkite has long
since identified himself as a liberal, but I didn't know until this letter that he was so committed
to plunging America into world government.
Video: Hillary Clinton and
Walter Cronkite at the World Federalist Association meeting, 1999, where Mr. Crokite was
awarded the Norman Cousins Global Governance Award.
The Editor says...
This is a rather alarming piece of video, in which Walter Crokite mocks the idea of a world government
ruled by Jesus Christ, and then actually says, "Join me. I'm glad to sit here at the right hand
of Satan."
More information
about Walter Crokite.
Throw the U.N. on the Ash Heap of
History. In his book, "The U.N. Exposed: How the United Nations Sabotages America's
Security", Eric Shawn, a senior correspondent and anchor for the Fox News Channel, takes the reader behind the
scenes to reveal an utterly corrupt international institution. Like its predecessor, the League of
Nations, the U.N. has demonstrated the maniacal insanity of expecting nations to cooperate with one another
for any other reason than self-interest.
The Curse of
Wilson: [President] Bush is embracing the international system, which liberals consider to be
Woodrow Wilson's gift to mankind. Wilson was the guiding spirit of the Treaty of Versailles and the
League of Nations. … Of the many bad habits Woodrow Wilson bequeathed to America, one of the worst
was his penchant for talking about countries as if they were people.
UN — The last refuge of
scoundrels. Ah, the UN. We've gone from a relatively well functioning operation under
Trygvie Lie and Dag Hammarskjold to the finest of charades under Boutros Boutros Ghalli.
Last chance for
UN. As the United Nations looks for its next secretary-general to replace Kofi Annan at the end
of the year, the organisation is rocked by failures and scandals. One of the UN's core goals is to protect
human rights. And yet the UN Commission on Human Rights has dictators and tyrants deciding on its
membership.
Kofi's Biggest Regret:
Saddam's Rape Rooms Are Closed. This isn't exactly the way he put it, but the fact that Kofi
Annan's "biggest regret" upon leaving the United Nations is that he didn't prevent our "invasion" of Iraq,
amounts to the same thing.
Plunder Down
Under: At United Nations headquarters, Secretary General Kofi Annan likes to imply that the
Oil-for-Food era is over ("If there was a scandal" was his locution earlier this year). But Down Under,
that landmark U.N. scam is right now all over the headlines. On Monday [11/27/2006], Australia's Cole
commission released the findings of its year-long inquiry into some $220 million in kickbacks allegedly
paid by the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) to Saddam Hussein's U.N.-sanctioned regime under Oil-for-Food.
Kofi Annan's Last Cover-up: The fact is that if
Mr. Annan departs Turtle Bay without having made his financial disclosure form public, the public will
have reason to wonder. His term at the United Nations will be remembered only for the oil-for-food
scandal, the sex-for-food scandal in the Congo, the massacres at Rwanda, Cambodia, and Srebrenica, and
inaction in the face of the genocide in Darfur — and establishing that deception, secrecy,
and patronage cannot be pierced by the reforms by which he sought to rescue his reputation.
Update:
Kofi Annan's Cover-Up. It was big
news in the Washington Times, and the paper deserves credit for covering this important development.
Despite claims about being more open, honest and reform-minded, the United Nations will NOT be releasing the
financial disclosure form filed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The cover-up continues.
The Status
of United Nations Reform: Sixty years ago, the United Nations was founded to maintain
international peace and security, promote self-determination and basic human rights, and protect fundamental
freedoms. Sadly, weaknesses in the organization have prevented it from fully realizing these high
aspirations. An accretion of outdated or duplicative mandates, insufficient transparency and
accountability, and the resistance of member states to reform have resulted in a system that is bureaucratic,
costly, cumbersome, lacking in oversight, and often incapable of fulfilling the responsibilities placed upon it.
Send Out the
Clowns. From the rostrum of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Hugo Ch&aacuate;vez declared
that Bush is the devil. The lectern still smelled like sulfur, the odor left by the U.S. president, he
observed. … Not everything that Ch&aacuate;vez said should be dismissed, however. Surprisingly,
amid that torrent of claptrap, he proposed a luminous initiative that should be immediately considered:
Take the United Nations out of New York and move it to the Third World. Bravo!
Indicting the United Nations:
Largely unnoticed is the xenophobia that exists on a daily basis at the United Nations. While the UN
constantly hectors the US to send money that constitutes 25% of its budget, Americans hold only 7.2% of its
more than 56,000 jobs. A study by the General Accounting Office determined that, at the senior,
decision-making level, only 2,076 Americans, 9.5%, hold such positions. This prejudice exists
throughout the UN's operations. The World Food Program, for which the US provides more than half of its
funding, is staffed by 90% of non-American personnel who, every year, find it difficult to account for tons
of food that simply goes missing.
Welcome Back to
the 1950s. With the United Nations, specifically its Security Council, demonstrating anew that
it won't or can't do much about the North Korean nuclear threat, it's back to when deterrence was the only
weapon left to us: Mutually assured destruction. Or Mini-MAD, if you prefer. That's where
we are, thanks to the Security Council, which bypassed a meaningful arms embargo proposal from the Bush
administration in favor of toothless resolution 1718, which tries to gum North Korean madman Kim Jong-il
into submission.
Kofi's successor: Kofi
Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, steps down in December, and the race to succeed him is still wide
open. The process of choosing his successor is anything but clear: by tradition a candidate "emerges"
from discussion in the Security Council, and the name is then put to the General Assembly for approval. In
practice, the successful contender is chosen after heated wrangling, horse trading and threats by the
veto-wielding members to block anyone they do not like.
Annan's
Ugly Exit. Outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan traveled to the Harry Truman Library
yesterday [12/11/2006] to deliver his valedictory. It was yet another sanctimonious broadside against
the Bush administration.
Annan's
dishonor: You have to wonder what Annan would have said in 1945 when [President] Truman ordered
nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki instead of waiting on the possibility Japan's militarists might
surrender. Clearly, Annan, quite undiplomatically, was trying to score cheap political points while
molesting American history.
Kofi's
Classless Exit: Departing U.N. chief Kofi Annan has much to answer for during his tenure, including
his own possibly criminal behavior. Instead, in one of his final speeches, he lets loose a flood of bile,
mostly aimed at the U.S. First in an op-ed in the Washington Post and later in a farewell speech, Annan
laid out his case for what ails the world. And for the most part, it can be boiled down to five simple
words: the United States of America.
Annan
Slammed for Speech Critical of US. Drawing a cold response from conservatives, outgoing U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan Monday [12/11/2006] took a swipe at U.S. military actions abroad and rebuked the
Bush administration for abuses during the post-9/11 campaign against Islamist terrorists.
White House Considers Appointing Pro-U.N. Activist as
Ambassador to the United Nations. Various reports indicate that liberal Republican Richard S.
Williamson is in the running for the post of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Williamson, a former U.S.
deputy ambassador at the U.N., is also a former board member of the pro-U.N. lobby group, the U.N. Association,
and favors "alternative financing mechanisms" for the world body. This is a euphemism for global taxes.
Shocking Truth Uncovered About U.N. Taxation Plan:
From September 14-16, 2005, the U.N. is holding a "high-level plenary meeting" of the U.N. General Assembly to
"review progress in fulfillment of commitments" contained in the U.N. Millennium Declaration. The end
result will be more pressure on the U.S. for tens of billions of dollars in more foreign aid. In fact,
U.N. pressure is building for imposing global taxes on the U.S.
The Bush Record on the U.N.: Increased
funding of the U.N. (U.S. contributions to the U.N. System from risen from $3.1 billion in fiscal year
2001 to $5.3 billion in fiscal year 2005). Supports ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty.
Supported Ban Ki-moon, the South Korean foreign minister, as new U.N. Secretary-General, despite his support
for global taxes. Ordered Texas courts to comply with an International Court of Justice ruling in a death
penalty case. Renewed membership in UNESCO, at a cost of $67 million a year.
New U.N.
Secretary-General in Early Flap. New U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ran into trouble on his
first day of work Tuesday [1/2/2007] over Saddam Hussein's execution when he failed to state the United Nations'
opposition to the death penalty and said capital punishment should be a decision of individual countries.
United
Nations' Credibility on the Line. If the United Nations is going to be an effective broker for
peace and conduit for diplomacy, it must itself be above reproach. The United Nation's track record with
regard to Israel, specifically, is unbalanced at best; anti-Semitic at worst. In just a single session of
the UN General Assembly, it passed 21 individual resolutions criticizing Israel.
Last stand for U.N. in
Sudan. Finally, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pulled the world's attention back to the crisis
during a summit this week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As part of his legacy Annan would undoubtedly like to
see an end to the warfare. But the United Nations has been feckless and impotent as this fearsome
genocide churns on endlessly.
The UN's Dictator Tour
2006: Not the least unfortunate aspect of the United Nations is its habit of providing Third World
despots with a prominent pulpit to speechify against the agency's principal sponsor: the United States.
What really smells at the
U.N.: That dynamic duo of demagoguery — Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran — visited the United Nations earlier this month. Their outrageous
addresses before the U.N. brings to mind the definition of "demagogue" proffered by H.L. Mencken. He
said a demagogue was "one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." Thus,
any reasonable person who failed to walk out of the U.N. as these two leaders babbled on deserve the label of "idiot."
U.N. Approves Global Taxes to Fight
AIDS . There was a minor media breakthrough on this matter, with the New York Times noting, "A
group of countries led by France plan to raise at least $300 million next year, mostly through taxes on
airline tickets, to help pay for the treatment of children with AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, a senior French
official said yesterday. … The Times was careful not to describe these as international or global taxes.
But the taxes are designed to go for global purposes and finance international agencies.
United Nations' AIDS programme under
fire. Authors accuse agency of putting politics before health.
HillaryCare
for the World: The World Health Organization (WHO) is a United Nations body created, in the words
of its constitution, to "promote and protect the health of all peoples."
Chaos,
conflict, tyranny: would we do better without the UN? It is funny that the acronym for the
United Nations is UN. It always makes me think of negatives. Unhelpful. Unrealistic.
Unproductive. Unhappy. … Despite all this, most people still tend to assume that the UN is the best
place to look for a solution to this latest crisis in the Middle East.
U.N. Stands
for "UnNecessary". You might be asking, "What do 'occupying forces' have to do with issues of
disability?" The answer is, "Absolutely nothing!" But Middle East Arab countries were willing to
trade off their so-called "pro-life stand" in order to see language referring to Israel and the United
States in a negative light.
The U.N.'s
Masquerade: The problem with the president's warning is that the United Nations has been one
of the chief obstacles to effective action in Darfur. Its failure to stop the killing offers another case
study in the U.N.'s debilitating mix of pomposity, cynicism, and moral bewilderment.
An
unmitigated disaster. There is a good reason that Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah has accepted
UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which sets the terms for a cease-fire between his jihad army and the
State of Israel. The resolution represents a near-total victory for Hizbullah and its state sponsors
Iran and Syria, and an unprecedented defeat for Israel and its ally the United States.
The UN Terrorist Enablers
Council: So the top honcho at the UN wants yet another cease-fire in the Middle East? How
brilliant! Now why didn't anyone else think of that before? Syndicated columnist and economist
Thomas Sowell said in a column Thursday: "… There have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than
anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful
region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent."
New Report Details U.N. Fall from
Grace. A new study released by The National Center for Public Policy Research details an
embarrassing and alarming number of serious controversies involving the United Nations and argues for
meaningful reform.
Support for United Nations Justifiably
Weakened by Financial, Sex and Human Rights Scandals. The esteem in which the American public
holds the U.N. is sinking. In the opinion of an increasing number of Americans, the U.N. not only
assaults U.S. national sovereignty but also is a corrupt and incompetent organization. A June 2005
survey by pollster Scott Rasmussen found 42 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view of the U.N.
U.N. Investigated Over 300 for Sex
Abuse. The United Nations has investigated more than 300 members of U.N. peacekeeping missions
for alleged sexual exploitation and abuse during the past three years and more than half were fired or sent
home, according to a senior U.N. official.
Call for ban on 'defamation of
Islam'. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf today called for a ban on the "defamation of
Islam" in a speech to the UN General Assembly in which he took a veiled swipe at Pope Benedict XVI for
his remarks linking the Muslim faith to violence.
The UN is barking but the
US can bite. If Iran is going to worry about the prospect of sanctions, it should be those that
the US is drawing up on its own, not anything trickling out of the UN. There are hints that the US may
enforce its current sanctions laws against foreign companies dealing with Iran far more aggressively than it
has yet done — and Congress may tighten the laws further. That could hurt Iran and companies
dealing with it more than anything the UN laboriously does.
The Great U.N.
Delusion: If religion is the opiate of the masses, then the United Nations is the opiate of the
elites. Global U.N. worship is based on an odd mix of delusion and realpolitik. To self-described
internationalists, the U.N. is supposed to be a counterweight to America's "unipolar" dominance. In the
wake of the U.S.-led victory in the Cold War, America greeted an ungrateful world eager to see the remaining
superpower counterbalanced by, well, something. And the U.N. was the only viable candidate.
Kick U.N. out of New York
City. Given the pathetic record of the United Nations over the last 60 years,
Bush should tell Kofi Annan and his band of thieves that he is throwing the full weight of his
administration behind a plan to remove the United Nations from its New York City digs and withdraw
U.S. funding of this corrupt, anti-American, anti-Semitic organization of terrorist
sympathizers. Give them until, say, the end of next year to clear out.
Pull Canada out of the
UN. Because of the tragic deaths of a Canadian peacekeeper in a UN bunker near the border,
everyone now knows that, in fact, the UN has been there for years — since 1978, in fact. It
didn't stop terrorist attacks on Israel in the past, it isn't stopping the war today, and it won't do anything
in the future, either.
Gender
Equality Gobbledygook: One would think that the just-released 148-page United Nations Children's
Fund (UNICEF) report, "The State of the World's Children 2007" — with its exclusive focus on gender
equality — was produced by leftists and feminists. Instead, it is the product of Ann M.
Veneman, the Executive Director of UNICEF and a Bush appointee who promised to bring back a sane perspective on
children's issues. … The 148-page UNICEF report is all about the left's "women's agenda," albeit papered
over with slogans such as "a world fit for women is a world fit for children." We expected more of a Bush
appointee who was supposed to bring a whiff of reality to UNICEF. As a result, once again we have to ask,
"Can anything good come out of Turtle Bay?"
Feminist Scheme for U.N.
Reform: Thank goodness the membership of the new Human Rights Council includes such upholders of
individual freedoms and civil liberties as Cuba, China, and Russia. Of course we're all supposed to stand
up, applaud, and send in our check. Just for the record, U.S. taxpayers pay $420 million a year to
the United Nations for "assessed" dues, plus billions more in "voluntary" contributions to the overall
U.N. system.
Feckless UN: Suppose
the UN were to support Mr. Anan's proposal? What is a "stabilization" force? By definition a
stabilization force is a small contingent of so-called peace-keepers, embarked upon its mission after fighting
has ceased. We saw in the Balkans that those peace-keepers easily become hostages for an aggressor
preparing to resume military hostilities. Or worse, as we saw in Africa and the Balkans, peace-keepers
become sexual predators exploiting the plight of displaced populations.
Fox News Vs. the U.N., Part
Two. After the U.N.'s number two man delivered a hysterical broadside at Fox News and Rush
Limbaugh for being critical of the world body, Eric Shawn of Fox News did a story noting the involvement of
convicted inside trader and left-wing anti-Bush eccentric billionaire George Soros in the pro-U.N. event
which featured U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown. Soros is a big U.N. backer and even
helps underwrite the awards given out by the U.N. Correspondents Association.
UN Bashing is Hardly Enough. During
its six decades, the overall record of the United Nations has been so rife with failure, corruption and
incompetence — to say nothing of poor judgment, rudeness and condescension, as exemplified
by [deputy secretary-general Mark] Malloch Brown — that it deserves to be disdained.
Oil-for-Food scandal aired in
court. A South Korean acting as a go-between with Boutros Boutros Ghali, the UN Secretary-General
at the time, asked for $10 million from Iraq to "take care of some people" before the creation of the UN
Oil-for-Food programme, a court in New York has been told. Iraq set aside $15 million for the alleged
bribery scheme and sent $3 million in cash to New York in the year that the UN's largest humanitarian
programme was set up, the court was told.
Update:
South
Korean convicted in oil-for-food case. A U.S. federal court jury found South Korean lobbyist
Tongsun Park guilty of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Iraq and money-laundering
on Thursday [7/13/2006] for his role in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal.
U.N.
fails to make oil-for-food reforms, according to an investigator. The United Nations has failed
to take on board some of the key recommendations of an investigation into corruption in its oil-for-food
programme in Iraq, an investigator told Reuters on Thursday [9/7/2006].
Exposing the U.N.
Oil-for-Food Scandal. As U.S. News and World Report senior writer Michael Barone
explained: "The U.N. Oil for Food program, we learn from the reporting of Claudia Rosett
in The Wall Street Journal, was a rip-off on the order of $21 billion — with money
intended for hungry Iraqis going instead to Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, to bribed
French and Russian businesses and, evidently, to the U.N.'s own man in charge, Benon Savan."
Editor's Note:
The article above includes links to numerous other articles about the Oil for Food scandal.
The United Nations
in your wallet. In spite of some pretty torrid scandals in recent years, the United Nations is
far from finished. In fact, Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the U.N., is leading the gambit for perhaps
its biggest power-grab yet — independent tax-raising powers or globo-taxation.
Cashless Society "Inevitable;" a
Boost to Globalist Taxers? Money won't be around anymore in just a few years, according to trend
watchers. And the same globalist taxers that are already trying to confiscate your hard-earned money
can't wait for the cashless era to begin.
The UN Plan for Global Migration:
The dream of a New World Order was born long before socialist visionaries (including Franklin Roosevelt and
the leaders of the Federal Council of Churches) enthroned Communist Alger Hiss as the first head of the United
Nations.
U.S. probe targets U.N.
department. "U.N. resources are unnecessarily vulnerable to mismanagement, waste, fraud and abuse,"
the GAO report says, "because the procurement process is improperly managed; has not committed to maintaining
a professional, trained work force; and has failed to adopt a full range of ethical guidelines."
The
Doomsday clock. Thirty days. That's how long the UN Security Council gave Iran last
week to stop trying to enrich uranium, which could be used for an atomic bomb. And if Iran doesn't
politely withdraw its application to join the nuclear club by the time the clock runs out, well, the UN
will just have to meet again. Doesn't sound like much of a threat, does it?
Australian
PM Denies Knowledge of Oil-for-Food Bribery Claims. Called to answer questions about alleged
bribes paid by Australia's wheat export body to the regime of Saddam Hussein, Prime Minister John Howard
on Thursday become the country's first political leader to testify before a commission of inquiry in more
than two decades.
Possible
Saddam-Al Qaeda Link Seen in U.N. Oil-for-Food Program. Did Saddam Hussein use any
of his ill-gotten billions filched from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program
to help fund Al Qaeda? Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted
and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam's
overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis.
Cash-for-Kofi:
Despite frequent declarations of reform, it seems that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has
learned nothing from the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food scandal, in which Saddam Hussein's billions corrupted the
U.N.'s entire Iraq embargo bureaucracy. Earlier this month, Annan accepted from the ruler of Dubai an
environmental prize of $500,000 — a fat sum that represents the latest in a long series of
glaring conflicts of interest.
Environmental advocate arrived in private jet.
The head of the UN's environmental program opted for one of the least environmentally friendly modes of transport to get to
this week's conference in Tromsø. He claims he had no choice.
The United States of America Should Withdraw From
the United Nations. 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 be
allowed to do what it will not and cannot.
Congress Passes Ron Paul's Amendment to
Reject UN Taxes. The US House of Representatives today [6/15/2005] unanimously passed legislation
introduced by Congressman Ron Paul that ensures no Americans will be forced to pay taxes to the United
Nations. Under Paul's amendment to a State Department funding bill, no US taxpayer dollars may be used to
develop, implement, or impose any tax on American citizens to raise revenue for the UN.
Citizen Distraction: Who's
the terrorist of the day? The US was close to a civil tax revolt against the 16th amendment
to the Constitution when all this occurred. Now who's watching taxes when anthrax is loose? Who's
watching the government land grabs now that they're watching out for a plague? Citizen Distraction.
It's a great game of domestic subjugation of citizens while they're distracted by mass scare tactics that do
not warrant all the media attention causing the scares. And where major media is, there's something behind
that curtain they don't want us to see. It might be the UN flag.
How Communism and The U.N. Set Out to
Destroy America: Any limit on UN jurisdiction was deliberately camouflaged by another public
relations campaign that painted the organization as a world body of great benevolence that must secure the
approval of its members. It is unclear if our World Heritage Sites, which put American land in the
hands of and under the control of the United Nations, are examples of such benevolence.
Kofi Annan Aide Shredded Thousands of
Documents. The destruction of highly sensitive documents by Kofi Annan's chief aide is a
massive obstruction of justice that demands major congressional investigation. It gives the
impression of a huge cover-up at the very heart of the United Nations, and casts a dark cloud over
the credibility of the UN secretary-general. It projects an image of impunity, arrogance and
unaccountability on the part of the leadership of the United Nations.
How
the Oil for Food scandal unfolded. Around four days after the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait
in August 1990, the UN imposed economic sanctions prohibiting member states from trading in Iraqi
commodities or products. These remained in place until 2003. In April 1995, the UN agreed
to let the Iraq government sell oil, with all funds to be deposited into an escrow bank account
monitored by the UN to be used for buying humanitarian goods — dubbed Oil for Food.
Oil for kickbacks. An
investigation of the United Nations' Oil for Food program concluded that thousands of companies and
individuals, including several in Houston, paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein so they could purchase
underpriced Iraqi oil or sell goods to Iraq while sanctions were in place. The investigation
rightly faults the United Nations and Secretary-General Kofi Annan for not controlling or preventing
the corruption. However, the Oil for Food program was doomed to corruption the moment Saddam
was allowed to select the oil buyers and goods sellers.
No
Rush to Examine Oil-For-Food Documents. In a secret and secure location, a set of
computers holds the hundreds of thousands of files that document how companies and individuals
from some 40 countries exploited the U.N. oil-for-food program in league with Saddam Hussein.
Don't Shred on
Me. The most urgent implication of Mr. Volcker's incomplete findings is that
his huge and expensively assembled archives must be preserved intact well beyond the Dec. 31
deadline by which Mr. Volcker now plans to start disposing of them. Above all, they must not
be handed back to the U.N., where too much related to the corrupt Oil for Food program has already
vanished — including, to a fascinating extent, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's own powers
of recollection.
More oil-for-food
probes may be launched. Swiss authorities may launch criminal investigations
into the conduct of several dozen companies in connection with the United
Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq, officials said Wednesday [11/16/2005].
Oil-for-Food panel
to keep records an extra month. The U.N.-appointed panel investigating the
scandal-tainted, oil-for-food program for Iraq said on Wednesday [11/16/2005] it would stay
open an extra month to help prosecutors build cases against corrupt companies and officials.
France
implicated in oil-for-food. French authorities reportedly knew of fraud being committed
by government officials involved in the oil-for-food program. … A series of investigations in France
and in the United States have implicated French politicians and businessmen in a web of kickbacks
connected to the oil-for-food program.
Probe to blow the lid off massive U.N.
scandal. Documents prove oil-for-food corruption involving world leaders.
Woes beyond
oil-for-food. So, up at the United Nations, Benon Sevan is out and John Bolton
is in. That's one small step for rooting out corruption; one giant leap for American
interests.
Our man at the
U.N.: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled this morning [7/27/2006] to
consider yet again one of President Bush's most inspired nominations — the appointment of
John Bolton to the post of U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
The Anatomy of a Smear: The U.N.
Correspondents Association (UNCA), with few exceptions, is a lapdog of the world organization and its
anti-American majority. But Warren Hoge's July 23 hit-piece on U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John
Bolton represented a new low. Hoge, a member of UNCA who covers the U.N. for the New York Times,
resorted to using anonymous sources to smear Bolton.
Bravo for Bolton.
Perhaps the best reason to support John Bolton's confirmation as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is that
his approach to foreign policy is radically different from John Kerry's, as shown by their exchange during
Mr. Bolton's confirmation hearings. It is a shame anyone missed this delicious slap-down.
Oil for Food comes to
Reston. The U.N. oil-for-food program's many threads continue to unravel, and
the latest leads to the Washington area. New York prosecutors announced [10/20/2005] that Reston-based
Midway Trading, an oil-trading company, told the New York State Supreme Court that it gave $440,000 to
the Saddam Hussein's regime in connection with the U.N. oil-for-food program.
UN team links more oil cash to
Galloway wife's bank account. George Galloway faced new questions last night after a UN
inquiry tracked additional payments of Iraqi oil money into his wife's bank account.
George Galloway
and the Oil-for-Food Scandal: Time for U.S. and British Inquiries. The
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) today [10/25/2005] unveiled new evidence
on British Member of Parliament George Galloway's involvement in the Iraqi Oil-for-Food scandal.
I would have said "canned".
Kofi
must be sacked. World leaders will assemble in New York this week to talk about the
urgent task of reforming the UN. Unfortunately, it is likely that talk is all they will
do: there is no sign that they will be able to agree on any of the concrete reforms that the
UN so desperately needs.
U.N. Procurement Scandal: The
Case of the Official Who Never Was. Trouble in the United Nations Procurement Division
is now well established as the world organization's successor scandal to Oil-for-Food.
UN Allows Corruption While
Children Starve. American taxpayers entrust billions of dollars in aid each year
to the United Nations and its various agencies that are supposed to alleviate [poverty and
starvation], but the organization wants even more. What is worse, is that the UN is
mired in corruption and beleaguered by poor management.
Oil-for-Food Report
Shows the Limits of UN Ability. The latest news from Paul Volcker's Independent
Inquiry Committee reveals what independent observers of the United Nations have long
understood — that there are "serious instances of illicit, unethical, and
corrupt behavior within the United Nations," and there was "wholesale corruption" within
the Oil-for-Food program.
Beware of
the "Tranzis". Maybe [Heather] Locklear could play the part of Claudia
Rosett, who, almost alone among the fearlessly non-partisan band of investigative
journalists, delved deeply into the sleazy details of the oil-for-food program when
the establishment media were dismissing it as a storm in an oil can.
This was the most
glaring scandal of all. The US Congress is incensed about a scandal. From
1996 to 2003 the UN's oil-for-food program allegedly enabled Saddam Hussein to misappropriate
hundreds of millions of dollars. Certain UN officials – particularly Benon Sevan, the man
in charge of the program – are alleged to have pocketed large kickbacks. It is also claimed
that foreign politicians took similar advantage of the system. These are serious accusations
that warrant detailed investigation.
Of
what use is the United Nations? Sometimes, it seems the answer is: none
at all. The U.N. Oil for Food program, we learn from the reporting of Claudia
Rosett in The Wall Street Journal, was a rip-off on the order of $21 billion — with
money intended for hungry Iraqis going instead to Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, to bribed French
and Russian businesses and, evidently, to the U.N.'s own man in charge, Benon Savan.
Hungry for answers: If
you leave a fox in charge of the henhouse, don't expect many eggs. That nicely sums up the United Nations
Oil-for-Food program. It was supposed to feed starving people in Iraq. Instead, a handful of corrupt
bureaucrats in Baghdad and at the U.N. were in charge of the program and pocketed billions of dollars, while
innocent Iraqis starved to death.
The UN's Claim to Moral
Authority. Back in 2001, the United States was voted off the UN's Human Rights Commission for the
first time since its inception in 1947. When that happened, a variety of reasons were given as to why such
a vote occurred: the U.S. opposed the Kyoto treaty on climate change; the U.S. insisted upon creating a
missile defense system; the U.S. had the death penalty; the U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq after the Gulf
War. The countries voting against the U.S. deemed these actions to be human rights violations.
Senator
raps U.N. "brainwashing" on climate. The U.S. Senate's most vocal global warming skeptic, James
Inhofe, on Thursday [11/16/2006] dismissed a U.N. meeting on climate change as a "brainwashing" session.
Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who will step down as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee in
January, told a news conference, "The idea that the science (on global warming) is settled is altogether
wrong."
What the United Nations Stands For: The
U.N. does not stand for freedom and peace. The U.N. stands for moral equivalency: for pretending that free
countries and violent dictatorships are one and the same. Allowed to lead us, the U.N. will be the death
of us all.
Refusing
to Fund Forced Abortions is Controversial? On July 16, 2004, President Bush for
the third straight year steadfastly declined to make Americans complicit in China's coercive
abortive practices. Despite opposition from abortion organizations and media, the Bush
administration withheld taxpayer funds from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) because
it is connected to China's population control programs.
Loving Thy Enemy: When will most of us
wake up to the fact that the U.N. (and groups like it) are not on our side? Everything they do supports
the opposite of freedom, individual rights, and rational values. Never has this been clearer than
now. The very idea of U.N. people inspecting American facilities to make sure we treat these war
criminals "humanely" is incomprehensible. Now, when freedom and civilization need advocates of
individual rights more than ever, the U.N. places the personal comforts of terrorists on an even (or greater)
level with the pursuit of justice and safety.
Next scandal:
Overheads take
up to 1/3 of tsunami funds. Up to about a third of the $590 million U.N. fund spent
for the Indian Ocean tsunami relief may have gone to pay for overhead. The Financial Times
says its two-month investigation showed the money appears to have been spent on administration,
staff and related costs. The $590 million was part of the United Nation's $1.1 billion
disaster flash appeal.
Tsunami aid 'spent on
politics'. Three years after Australians donated $400 million to rebuild Asian lives
devastated by the 2004 tsunami, aid groups are under attack for spending much of the money on social and
political engineering. A survey by The Australian of the contributions by non-government organisations
to the relief effort found the donations had been spent on politically correct projects promoting left-wing
Western values over traditional Asian culture.
The U.N.'s Distortion of
Rights: The "positive rights" championed by the U.N. Declaration are
neither positive nor rights. They mandate a profound negative — the initiation
of force against the individual — and they are the enemies of genuine rights.
International Coalition Against Terrorism is a Terrible
Idea: There may be instances when some of its closest allies (certainly the United Kingdom
and perhaps even other NATO allies) will join its military operations, but the price of entry must be unreserved
support for America's political and military objectives to eradicate terrorism.
What the Constitution giveth, the UN taketh
away: The United Nations in their infinite arrogance, and self-assured pomposity have once again
found a way to attempt to determine American domestic policy.
Also of interest:
It's
time to evict the U.N. My wife would like to see us kick the United Nations out
of the United States. I, for one, think it's a swell idea. What's more, I'm certain
that most New Yorkers feel the same. After all, for the past 58 years, the gang of
scofflaws have taken advantage of their diplomatic immunity to be the worst kind of
guests. Double-parking is the least of it.
Bush Supports Incompetent
Annan. The United States expressed confidence in Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday
[12/9/2004] and said he should remain at the helm of the United Nations, an abrupt turnaround from its refusal
to back him last week after a U.S. senator called for his resignation.
A Crude Fraud. The first interim
report on the oil-for-food scandal is out, and it isn't pretty. It implicates a top U.N. official, and
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has yet to be cleared.
U.N.
Suspends Two Officials– With Pay! – in the Oil-for-Food Scandal. The
United Nations has suspended the former head of the oil-for-food aid program
in Iraq and another senior official who helped select the program's contractors. The
move comes after an interim report by an independent commission on Thursday
[2/3/2005] that severely criticized the conduct of both men.
Oil For
Food Foolery: Senate hearings in mid-November 2004 revealed that Iraq's Saddam
Hussein skimmed over $21 billion from the UN "oil-for-food" program that was supposed to
feed and provide medicine for the Iraqi people — and used the money to
bribe UN and European officials.
U.N. follies. 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?
Fears of top UN role for Zimbabwe.
Western countries are concerned about the expected appointment of Zimbabwe to head a key UN body, the Commission
on Sustainable Development.
Millions missing, but UN
ignores Zimbabwe's quiet genocide. Suffer the little children is a phrase never far from your
mind in today's Zimbabwe. The horde of painfully thin street kids milling around you at traffic lights is
almost the least of it: in a population now down to 11 million or less, there are an estimated
1.3 million orphans. Go to one of the overflowing cemeteries in Bulawayo or Beit Bridge, and you are
struck by the long lines of tiny graves for babies and toddlers. Hyena attacks on humans, previously
unheard of, are increasingly common.
Did
someone mention Zimbabwe?
Get Out Of The U.N., Start
Over. The U.N. is involved in a huge scandal which has the potential to escalate beyond anything
we have known to date. At a minimum U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan presided over the misappropriations
of billions of dollars in the oil-for-food program designed to help poor Iraqis. Instead, the money never
reached the poor. It was used to finance new weapons programs for Saddam Hussein, weapons which were
manufactured by those who opposed U.S. intervention in Iraq, namely France, Germany and Russia.
The high price of Kofi:
U.S. out of U.N. - now!
The United Nations does not serve the interests of the United States or the objectives of democracies. The
oil-for-food scandal, in which billions of dollars were misappropriated in Iraq, exposed a corrupt bureaucracy,
rotting from the head.
Condi's First Test: The
Oil-for-Food Scandal. Although the Iraqi elections on January 30 [2005] will top her incoming
agenda, the first real indicator of Condi Rice's tenure as Secretary of State will be how she handles something
most in her new department would rather ignore: the United Nations' oil-for-food scandal.
Just scrap it and start over.
In wine, the experts say, vintage is everything. If that's the case, 2004 has turned out to be a very bad
year for the United Nations. But the United Nations' vinegar may yet prove to be a very good thing for the
rest of us — particularly if the decision is made to break open the casks, pour out the putrid
contents and start over.
Humor:
U.N. Money-for-Peace Scam May Force Annan to
Resign. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan today vigorously denied allegations that he has overseen
a complex, fraudulent scheme to pilfer billions of dollars from 191 nations under the guise of providing "global
peace services."
Dare We Surrender America's Future to the UN?
The future of the United States of America cannot be surrendered to the United Nations.
The United Nations: A Totalitarian Appeasing
Debating Society. The United States provides 22 percent of the U.N.'s general operating
budget. By contrast, France, Great Britain, China and Russia combined contribute less than 15 percent.
However, as members of the Security Council, each of those nations enjoys veto power over the U.S.
The United Nations has sovereign control ( = ownership)
of Yellowstone Park.
The United Nations Versus The United States:
According to this author, the UN intends to secure the power to tax all financial transactions and control the
taxation policies of all nations; the UN intends to exercise power over land use throughout the world; the UN
already has control over major U.S. historical sites and natural wonders including the Statute of Liberty and
Yellowstone National Park; the UN intends to restrict gun ownership worldwide.
Kiss your rights
goodbye? Will the International Criminal Court have the ability to preempt and eliminate the
hard-won rights of U.S. citizens? A treaty signed by former-President Clinton -- that is now being
reviewed by President Bush -- could easily lead to the destruction of U.S. sovereignty and constitutionally
guaranteed protections, warns one veteran U.S. congressman.
The UN: United in Opposition to
the US. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan continues to claim that only the UN can grant
legitimacy to the United States' successful war to topple Saddam Hussein. Rationally, that claim can be
viewed as little more than a pathetic, baseless whine from those clinging to a dying dream of global power.
Role of the UN: Globalism is out of
control and it's far passed time for the United States to secede from the United Nations in its present form
unless we intend to ultimately surrender our national sovereignty and be ruled by an omnipotent world government.
Perpetual War: President
Bush did not seek the expected congressional declaration of war as required by the U.S. Constitution.
Instead, our commander in chief sought permission and approval from the United Nations. Dragging its feet,
the U.N. Security Council finally passed Resolution 1373, authorizing America to fight the "war on terrorism."
The UN Is NOT Your
Friend: Behind the mask of peace, brotherhood, and universal understanding, the United Nations
promotes terror and tyranny in order to achieve its real objective: world government.
Conservatives
Bristle at 'United Nations Day': According to a proclamation released by the White House Wednesday,
Oct. 24, 2001, was recognized as United Nations Day, a day to celebrate the U.S. relationship with the U.N.
But not everyone was celebrating, especially some conservatives who believe that in light of U.N. treatment of
the U.S., America should sever all ties with the organization.
The Immorality of a Self-Defense Consensus:
Do people who value life, liberty, and the pursuit of prosperity understand that they have a right to defend
themselves against people who want to kill them? If the answer is yes, then a | |