Just How Awful is the UN?

By Alan Caruba

It is hard to imagine a more nauseating assemblage than those who gather for a meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Belonging to such an organization—and the United States does—is an insult to humanity.

When the General Assembly votes, it puts nations such as Liechtenstein and Tonga on an equal footing with the United States. It is one vote, one nation. The United States has more people living in Florida than live in more than 130 member nations of the UN.

The United Nations is so corrupt and so devoid of any sense of decency that it should have been abandoned by the United States long ago. By 2003, there had been 291 wars resulting in 22 million deaths and during that time, the UN had authorized military intervention only twice; once in response to North Korea’s invasion of South Korea and following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In both cases, the United States bore the brunt of the fighting.

Despite 17 resolutions, the UN disapproved of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein and the Baath regime. Now long since swept under the carpet was the Iraq’s corrupt “Oil for Food” program during Kofi Annan’s stewardship as Secretary General, but it’s well to remember that Saddam benefited to the tune of $21 billion while UN officials looked the other way.

Unknown to most Americans is the role of the Muslim bloc of nations whose numbers dominate the United Nations, thwarting measures to improve the rights of women, enforce religious tolerance, and other worthy causes, while they frequently play host to terrorist organizations or supporting terrorist activities.

The UN’s Commission on Human Rights was so abysmal that it was scrapped and replaced with a “new” Human Rights Council, but how new can it be when its first members included Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other regimes famous for human rights abuses?

President Obama will be among the heads of state addressing the General Assembly, but that podium will also be open to the odious Mamoud Ahmadinejad.

On September 24, the President will preside over a meeting of the UN Security Council and five seats away from him will be Libya’s longtime dictator, Col. Moammar Quaddafi. The discussion will be about “non-proliferation” of nuclear weapons, but there will be no discussion of disarmament.

Next week, the Human Rights Council will hear a report by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who agreed to investigate Israel’s brief war on Gaza. Though a Jew and self-described supporter of Israel, the report has been widely reported to lay all the blame on Israel and none on Hamas, the Palestinian organization responsible for years of rocket attacks on Israel.

The UN Commissioner of Human Rights, Navi Pillay, will also make a presentation whose 80 paragraphs devote 66 to Israel’s alleged misdeeds and 8 to Hamas, an organization devoted to the genocide of the Israelis. Thus, the ancient principle and right of self-defense will be flushed away in pursuit of the continuance of the UN’s insane hatred of Israel.

In 2000, the former Commission passed a resolution endorsing a Palestinian right of resistance to what it deemed Israeli “occupation” of lands lost in the wars against Israel. Six of the nine European Union nations voted in favor of it. The U.S. had lost its seat on the Commission in the previous year.

The UN’s idea of refugee relief has been to run “camps” for Palestinians, some of whom are in their second and third generations, living in isolation from Middle East nations that refuse to accept or integrate them as citizens.

One could rightly condemn the United Nations as utterly useless in lieu of its long record of failure to deter wars, the purpose for which it was founded following World War Two, but its own record of abuses is breathtaking. The introduction of UN peacekeeping troops has often been a prelude to rape and other crimes against local populations, nor has the presence of UN troops prevented massacres such as in Srebrenica during the Serbian-Kosovo conflict.

Its International Atomic Energy Agency has never prevented the acquisition of technology to make nuclear weapons. Both Pakistan and India secretly achieved their own weapons and the IAEA has proven useless with regard to North Korea and Iran.

It should also be noted that the entire “global warming” hoax was hatched by the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change, a farcical group that for years issued reports filled with preposterous computer models predicting what the climate would be in 2050. The IPCC has been the driving force behind the odious Kyoto Protocols upon which the current “Cap-and-Trade” bill in Congress is based.

The one thing the IPCC did not count upon was the onset of a global cooling cycle in 1998 that will be around for decades.

Most awful of all has been the unending effort of the United Nations to establish itself as a world government with its own military, control of the world’s oceans and seas, population and health issues, and, of late, the suggestion that it establish a global currency.

It is an Orwellian global bureaucracy, determined to become a global government that would exert its control over every aspect of life on planet Earth.

The United Nations is a failure.

Nations will not cease to conduct diplomacy with one another if the UN headquarters is shuttered.

Its presence on U.S. soil is a national disgrace.

Its existence is a threat to our national sovereignty.

The UN's Durban II Hate-Fest

By Alan Caruba

On Monday, April 20, the United Nations will convene Durban II, a conference which purports to encourage efforts to end the scourge of racism that has driven much of the history of mankind.

Like everything that emanates from that disgusting international organization, it has no intention of living up to its Declaration on Human Rights. If it did, it is unlikely that Iran’s Mamoud Ahmadinejad would receive a warm welcome, nor that Iran would have been the vice-chair of the preparatory committee led by Libya’s representative.

When Ahmadinejad spoke at the UN General Assembly last September, he said: “The dignity, integrity and rights of the European and American people are being played with by a small, but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the U.S. in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner.”

For Ahmadinejad, all of the Arab nations of the Middle East, and a large number of European nations, everything wrong with the world is conveniently explained by blaming the Jews. Durban I, held in South Africa, was such a hate-fest of anti-Semitism that the U.S. representatives withdrew and refused to participate.

Under the Obama administration, some of our diplomats tentatively attended planning sessions of Durban II despite knowing that it was going to be a repeat of Durban I. In doing so they signaled a degree of legitimacy for this most vile conclave. The Obama administration has decided to renew its membership in the UN Human Rights Council, something the Bush administration refused to do.

The previous UN Human Rights Commission was so vile that it had to be “reformed” into the present Council, but its membership includes the African and Asian groups, neither of which is famous for anything other than repression, corruption, and racism.

Member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference hold a majority in each of these groups, giving it the balance of power. Neither the U.S. vote, nor that of its “Western European and Others” group play any role in ameliorating the abject racism of the Council.

Durban II intends to criminalize any “defamation of Islam” based on a Pakistani proposal that only mentions Islam by name and ignores the other religions of the world such as Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and, of course, Judaism.

Islam regards all other faiths as “infidels” or unbelievers and the Koran explicitly says they should be subjugated and that their adherents can be killed, especially if they are Jews. It is a crime in Islamic nations to speak ill of Islam and the punishment is death. Converting to another religion will get you killed as well.

In a statement to the April 17 meeting of the preparatory committee held in Geneva, Switzerland, Anne Bayefsky of Eye on the UN, said, “The eyes of millions of victims of racism, xenophobia and intolerance are upon YOU, the representatives of states and the United Nations. And instead of hope you have given them despair. Instead of truth you have handed them diplomatic double-talk. Instead of combating anti-Semitism, you have handed them a reason for Jews to fear UN-driven hatemongering on a global scale.”

When it convenes on April 20th, the birth date of Adolph Hitler in 1889, his spirit will dominate the proceedings of Durban II. The good news is that no U.S. diplomats will attend. One hopes other nations whose people suffered and died as the result of his genocidal hatred will not attend either.

Durban II is yet another example of the Islamic jihad, its centuries old war on all other faiths. Those that deny its existance will continue to suffer its consequences.

The Olympics: A Political Game

By Alan Caruba

I am one of those people who rarely watches any sport. I was not into sports as a kid and, while I would occasionally attend a University of Miami football game as a student, I could never get into the mass hysteria that seems to afflict any crowd that watches any sport in a stadium.

It’s a “game.” The people involved are called “players” because it is a form of play. That said, I can and do appreciate the mastery of any game whether it’s Tiger Woods playing golf or some kid competing in gymnastics. I enjoy seeing anyone do anything well, be it a billiards championship or a poker tournament with a million bucks at stake.

Sports has become a mega-billion dollar industry with all manner of spin-offs for the often costly gear involved, the fan’s purchase of team-related items, and even the sale of baseball cards or other paraphernalia. I am all about capitalism, so you won’t find me complaining much about obscene salaries, although I do draw the line on universities paying a coach more than a professor or building a huge stadium while ignoring academic facilities and raising the tuition at the same time.

The Olympics, however, have always struck me as political. It’s what the author George Orwell called “mimic war” as nations compete to field teams that will hopefully bring home the glory and the gold. For that reason, it's well to keep in mind the reality that Beijing is under virtual martial law. President Bush is being urged to speak out on behalf of human rights in China. Though a worthy goal, it is an exercise in futility so far as China is concerned.

I am not likely to watch much of the China-based Olympic Games. I am happy that China has opened itself to the world to host them, but I am far less happy that the world has ignored its annexation of Tibet by armed force. As for the Chinese people, I want them to prosper as capitalists and hopefully to rid themselves of their Communist bosses some day in favor of a more democratic system.

One cannot be anything other than amazed at the progress China has made since it jettisoned the dead hand of the communist economic system. The Chinese have an ancient history of innovation and culture. Long suffering, the Chinese are an extraordinary people who were writing poetry while most of the West was still rubbing two sticks together to make fire.

The Games are China’s opportunity to demonstrate they have begun to join the modern nations of the world, competing in the arena of sports, playing host to athletes, tourists and the press of the world.

It is instructive that its current leaders are all engineers by profession. Engineers know how to create a nation’s infrastructure, building bridges, roads, plants to generate energy, and cities for its billion-plus population. They also know how to build prisons.

Across the narrow straits from China is Taiwan, an island nation that has long since demonstrated how to create a thriving democracy and economy. It did not escape the notice of China’s leaders. Despite the bellicose statements and actions of China toward Taiwan, they realized the example Taiwan set could be their own as well. This occurred only because the United States extended its protection to Taiwan after it broke away from mainland China. In order to open China to the world, however, the United States under Nixon had to undertake the diplomatic pretense that Taiwan did not have sovereign standing among the nations of the world.

So, thank you, Taiwan, for your courage and your example.

Previous Olympic Games have often suffered from the public’s disinterest in the 24/7 television coverage devoted to them. I will surely be among those watching something else for the duration of the Games, but I will be watching China for a very long time to come.