NP Rank:
No Brainer Report: UN Corrupt!
Barry Artiste Op/Ed
Well if they are not corrupt, I am damn sure they're smug and incompetent, that's for sure!
Those are not my words, but from what I hear are something similar Gen. Daillaire made when viewing the million or so Rwandan massacre, after the UN told him to only observe instead of getting more troops to stop the massacre. Who am I to say? The UN speaks for itself!
By Claudia Rossett: The UN Is Absolutely Corrupt
Summary: the UN is corrupt to its core and has long abandoned its idealist charter for the good of some, none democratic - a hopeless cause not worth funding or saving, unable to act on meaningful matters, incapable of stopping genocide, inept in all it touches, a bureaucratic nightmare
New English Review
February 2009
Claudia Rossett: The UN Is Absolutely Corrupt
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/32207/sec_id/32207
by Jerry Gordon
Claudia Rossett, intrepid foreign correspondent and investigative journalist, spoke to a Tiger Bay Club audience in Pensacola, Florida in mid-January. She discussed the corruption of the United Nations and its dominance by dictatorships and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The U.N., according to her, embodies the dictum of Lord Acton:
�Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Rossett's talk demonstrated the U.N. fulfillment of the worst aspects of international corruption. Rossett received acclaim for her stunning revelations in the pages of the Wall Street Journal about the U.N. Oil for food scandal, one of the largest financial frauds in recent history.
Her revelations led to a series of Congressional hearings about UN corruption and two awards: the 2005 Eric Breindel and the Mightier Pen awards. Asked during the Q+A period what one should do about the UN headquarters on the east side of Manhattan, Rossett suggested that perhaps moving it to Novosibirsk or the Canadian far north might be a useful first step. She noted that the UN was going through a $2 billion renovation of the New York complex, with the implication that the U.S. would be picking up a significant portion of the cost.
Rossett's career as a foreign correspondent and editor reporting from the former Soviet Union, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America has given her wide ranging exposure and knowledge about the nefarious corruption of the U.N. in its many guises. Ms. Rossett was Wall Street Journal Moscow Bureau chief from 1993 to 1996 and on the publications editorial board from 1997 to 2002.
She is a graduate of Yale (B.A. 1976), Columbia (M.A. 1979) and the University of Chicago Graduate Business School (M.B.A 1981). She is currently Journalist in Residence and director at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's Investigative Reporting Project and she writes a weekly column for Forbes.com.
Rossett has published widely. Publications in which her articles have appeared include the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Commentary, The New Republic, the Weekly Standard, and Forbes. She also blogs at Pajamas Media-The Rossett Report.
In her Pensacola presentation, Rossett discussed the structure of the UN, the Iraqi Oil for Food scandal, the UN Development Program and Cash for Kim Jong Il, the UNRWA program for Palestinian Refugees, the new UN Human Rights Commission, and the necessity of taking military action against Iran's nuclear project aimed at destroying Israel.
Before her presentation, I approached Ms. Rossett to personally thank her for another investigative piece ( http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=192 ) that revealed the extent of Muslim penetration in the Pentagon: the case of Heshem Islam, former Muslim Outreach aide to Bush Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, Gordon England. The issue involved reserve Army Major Stephen Coughlin, the lone Pentagon expert on Islamic War Doctrine, who was accused by Islam of being a Christian zealot with a pen leading to pressures to oust Coughlin from his Joint Staff assignment. Rossett obtained Islam's official bio from a Pentagon website, vetted it and found that it was embroidered raising questions of why Islam should be retained in his post.
Islam stayed till the end of the Bush second term and left with his boss, Undersecretary England. Coughlin received a new assignment and was able to continue his valuable work briefing U.S. commanders on the Islamic War Doctrine threat. Rossett's investigation in this matter may have contributed to Coughlin being retained by the Pentagon.
Why the U.N. Structure abets Corruption. Rossett started her talk by laying out the structure of the U.N. and its dominance by dictatorships and the 57 member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Her basic thesis is that the structure of the U.N. has no transparency or accountability and operates with virtual diplomatic immunity.
At the top of the U.N. structure is the Secretariat General. The Secretariat constitutes the world bureaucracy of the U.N. with over 8,900 staff and principle offices including those in Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Beirut, Geneva, Nairobi, Santiago and Vienna. It carries out decisions of the UN Security Council, General Assembly and UN Economic and Social Council (UNESCO). It has a current budget of $2 billion for mandated operations.
The U.S. finances more than 22 percent of the UN operating budget covering over 170 countries. The current head of the Secretariat is Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon former South Korean Foreign Minister who took office in 2007. The tenure of his predecessor, Kofi Annan, from 1997 to 2007 was blemished with calls for his resignation after the revelations of the Iraqi Oil for Food scandal uncovered by Rossett. Annan's son Kojo admitted he was involved in negotiations to sell millions of barrels of Iraqi oil under the auspices of Saddam Hussein.
There were calls in the U.S. for Annan's resignation as Secretary General resulting from the Iraqi Oil for Food program investigations. There are now 192 member states in the UN General Assembly. Rossett drew our attention to the G-77 group comprised of 120 mostly un-free dictatorships.
Prominent among the G-77 is the 57 member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The OIC has been in the forefront of promoting UN resolutions against so-called Islamophobia and Israel. OIC members have been involved in resolutions adopted at the reformed UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva pushing its position to criminalize alleged defamation of Islam. This is a thinly disguised attempt to throttle freedom of speech in the West.
We saw that reflected in so-called Human Rights investigations in Canada prompted by Muslim advocacy groups against journalists Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. Another example is Dutch parliamentarian and Freedom Party (PVV) leader Geert Wilders, who was recently found by an Amsterdam appeals court to be in criminal violation of Dutch Law for insulting Islam with his film Fitna.
The Security Council consists of 15 members, with five being permanent: the U.S., U.K., France, Russia and China. Each has veto power over adoption of U.N. resolutions. The current ten non-permanent members of the U.N. Security Council include: Austria, Japan, Burkina Faso, Libya Arab Jamahinya, Viet Nam, Costa Rica, Mexico, Croatia and Turkey. The non-permanent members serve for two year terms and cannot be re-elected by the General Assembly. Votes of the Security Council are binding on Member States.
Veto power of the Security Council arises from the so-called rule of great Power unanimity, that all decisions require nine votes of the members, but unanimity of the five permanent members. This has frequently led to stasis in resolving international disputes.
According to Rossett, there is little or no interest in defending democracy at the U.N. The U.N. Iraqi Oil for Food scandal The Iraqi Food for Oil program had its origins in the wake of the inconclusive First Gulf War that left Saddam Hussein in power. Economic sanctions were voted in 1990 against Iraq as punishment for the Kuwaiti invasion that triggered the conflict; however, pressures mounted to provide humanitarian assistance to Iraq's beleaguered people. The solution was the Oil for Food Program administered by the U.N. Secretary General.
Over seven years, between 1996 and 2003, the U.N. supervised more than $64 billion in transactions under the Oil for Food program. Of that, Saddam Hussein personally skimmed off between $11 to 17 billion. The Oil for Food program became a feeding trough that minted billions for Saddam to curry favor with Russia, China and France and acquire the materials for his Weapons of Mass Destruction development programs. Saddam also employed bribery by selling oil at below market prices. The U.N. administrators were in on the fraud. There was no real transparency and accounting. U.N. officials had the shield of diplomatic immunity. Further, when the scandal reached up to Secretary General Kofi Anan, involving his son Kojo, there was no mechanism in place to remove him from office. Rossett noted that Iraq's position as Number Two in world oil reserves fueled the scandal.
The Oil for Food program began in 1996 under U.N. supervision to sell Iraqi oil and purchase humanitarian aid in the form of medicines and food. The reality, she noted, was that it left it up to Saddam Hussein to partner with third party countries to supply the humanitarian aid. Rossett estimated that over $110 billion was grafted with partners that included Algeria, China, Egypt, France, Lebanon, Libya, Russia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. They supplied such items as baby food, milk, detergent, and even Japanese cars allegedly imported from Russia. All in exchange for selling weapons and brokering the sale of Iraqi oil offered at below world market prices and splitting the profits with Saddam.
In 2003 after the opening stages of the U.S. led Operation Enduring Freedom, Rossett indicated that an enormous data base was uncovered that lead to unraveling of the scandal. She said that the revelations involved prominent politicians in France, Russia and China and detailed evidences of bribes and blackmail. She noted that in the Delta report of the CIA chief weapons inspector, Saddam Hussein bought virtually anything he desired under U.N. auspices and spread money around the world using a French bank to launder it.
Rossett indicated that more than $10 billion in funds derived from the Iraqi Oil for Food program was used to reactivate Saddam's WMD programs, fund terrorists and acquire weapons. If that wasn't enough Rossett cited the 2.2 % commissions earned by the UN relief program amounted to $1.2 billion in so-called management fees. Note this from a report on Rossett's U.N. Oil for Food revelations by David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute: The head of the program received at least US$1.2-million in kickbacks from Saddam. Kofi Annan's son was paid US$195,000 by an oil-for-food contractor.
And, Rossett reports, the UN's own inquiry into the scandal discovered that Canada's Maurice Strong, a long-time UN Undersecretary-General, accepted in 1997 a check bankrolled by Saddam in the amount of US$988,885.
Strong (who has denied knowing where the money came from) was then serving as chief co-coordinator of UN reform, no less.
Rossett then turned her sights on Paul Volcker, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, who was selected to lead a $34 Million U.N. sponsored Independent Inquiry study into the Iraqi Oil for Food scandal. The Volcker Study findings reads like a veritable who's who of corporate and political grafters at the U.N. France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, U.K. were in on the take: Oil surcharges were paid in connection with the contracts of 139 companies and humanitarian kickbacks were paid in connection with the contracts of 2,253 companies.
Companies accused of paying kickbacks to the Iraqi regime include major global corporations such as Daimler-Chrysler AG, Siemens AG, and Volvo.
The Saddam Hussein regime received illicit income of $1.8 billion under the Oil-for-Food Program. $228.8 million was derived from the payment of surcharges in connection with oil contracts.
$1.55 billion came through kickbacks on humanitarian goods.
In allocating its crude oil, Iraq instituted a preference policy in favor of companies and individuals from countries that, as Tariq Aziz described, were perceived as friendly to Iraq, particularly those that were members of the Security Council.
Russian companies purchased 30 percent of oil sold under the Oil-for-Food Program, worth approximately $19.3 billion. French companies were the second largest purchasers of Iraqi crude oil under the Program overall, contracting for approximately $4.4 billion of oil from Iraq.
TOTAL International Limited and SOCAP International Limited contracts accounted for approximately 74 percent of the oil purchased by French companies under the Programme. Iraq awarded special allocations not only to companies, but also to individuals and their representatives.
These individuals were influential in their respective countries, espoused pro-Iraq views, or organized anti-sanctions activities. They included present and former government officials, politicians and persons closely associated with these figures, businessmen and activists involved in anti-sanctions activities. Several Russian political parties and politicians received allocations of Iraqi oil, including:
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (125.1 million barrels)
Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (73 million barrels)
Party of Peace and Unity (55.5 million barrels)
Alexander Voloshin, Chief of Staff to Russian President Vladimir Putin (4.3 million barrels).
The Iraqi government, in addition to giving preference to French-based companies, granted oil allocations to individuals based in France who espoused pro-Iraq views.
These included:
Jean-Bernard Merimee, Special Adviser to the United Nations, with the rank of Under-Secretary General (6 million barrels)
Charles Pasqua, former Minister of the Interior (11 million barrels)
Claude Kaspereit, businessman and son of French MP Gabriel Kaspereit (over 9.5 million barrels)
Serge Boidevaix, former Director of the Department for North Africa and the Middle East, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (over 32 million barrels)
Gilles Munier, Secretary-General of the French-Iraqi Friendship Association (11.8 million barrels).
British Member of Parliament George Galloway was allocated a total of over 18 million barrels of oil either directly or in the name of one of his associates, Fawaz Abdullah Zureikat.
Nearly two-thirds of the oil was lifted, or loaded by tanker at a port. Mr. Zureikat received commissions for handling the sale of approximately 11 million barrels that were allocated in Mr. Galloway's name.
According to Iraqi officials, oil allocations were granted to fund Mr. Galloway's anti-sanctions activities. Iraqi officials identified Mr. Zureikat as acting on Mr. Galloway's behalf to conduct the oil transactions in Baghdad. Roberto Formigioni, the President of the Lombardy Region of Italy, was granted a total of over 27 million barrels of oil by the Government of Iraq.
Over 24.1 million barrels of this oil were lifted. Rossett commented that Volcker was a better Federal Chairman than an investigator.
The final Independent Inquiry report, according to her was incomplete and didn't provide sufficient information.
Volcker never fully accounted for the billions paid to Russian and Chinese companies. The head of the UN Oil for Food program, Benon Sevan, left after being disciplined to a comfortable retirement in Cyprus with his ill-gotten gains from oil voucher kickbacks.
All this after running one of the biggest U.N. frauds in history. Iran takes over the UNDP and the Cash for Kim scandal Rossett then turned to what she deemed to be the flagship agency at the UN-the U.N. Development Program (UNDP). As Rossett has written:
It is the U.N.'s lead development agency, the chief coordinator in the field of almost all the others, loaded with money, dispensing high-level advice along with more than $9 billion per year around the globe some $5 billion of that from its own budget and another $4 billion or so on behalf of other U.N. operations.
The UNDP is a vast bureaucracy, blanketed in diplomatic immunity, bankrolled both by U.N. member-state contributions and hundreds of opaque public and private trust funds (the U.S., which gives well over $200 million per year, is among the UNDP's top donors). Boasting a presence in 166 countries, the UNDP moves money, personnel and equipment across borders around the globe with minimal independent oversight. Rossett accused the UNDP of collaborating with dictators in North Korea, Zimbabwe and the Islamic Republic of Iran, where it has a large presence. She quipped that UNDP stands for UN Dictators Program.
The latest example of this was the election of Iran to the 36 member governing council of the UNDP and of its representative as Chairman. Thus putting Iran, a major state sponsor of terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, in the driver's seat.
Iran is actively pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon in order to wipe Israel off the map of the world. Rossett cited the so-called Cash for Kim scandal involving North Korea, the hermit despotic state ruled by the pompadoured Kim Jong Il.
The Cash for Kim scandal arose in 2007, when a deputy to former US U.N. Ambassador, John Bolton, and the U.S. U.N. Mission Ambassador Martin Wallace, who was a member on the UNDP board raised questions about operations in North Korea.
Ambassador Wallace in a Wall Street Journal investigative report cited the following in a letter to UNDP Associate Administrator, Ad Melkert, in early January 2007.
The UNDP's program in the North Korean Democratic People's Republic has for years operated in blatant violation of U.N. rules, served as a steady and large source of hard currency and other resources for the DPRK government with minimal or no assurance that UNDP funds and resources are utilized for legitimate development activities.
Rossett noted the dimensions of the scandal: It turned out the UNDP's Pyongyang office, in violation of its own rules, had been funneling hard cash to Kim Jong Il's regime, storing counterfeit $100 banknotes in its office safe and, with North Korea then on the UNDP board, was using development funds to buy business class tickets for North Korean officials to attend board meetings in New York. A report last June from a panel authorized by the UNDP itself finally confirmed well after the fact that the UNDP had provided North Korea with scores of dual-use technologies, meaning that equipment shipped in under the U.N. label of development could also be turned to military use.
A Senate subcommittee investigation, led by Sens. Norm Coleman and Carl Levin, further discovered, as disclosed in a January 2008 report, that the UNDP in North Korea had transferred funds to North Korean front entities involved in arms and nuclear proliferation networks.
Some of these entities were in Macau. During a trip to the Far East last fall, I dropped by two of the addresses with which, according to the subcommittee's exhibits, the UNDP in Pyongyang had been doing business.
One was a basement supermarket, which the clerks said had been in business at that address for years. The other turned out to be a locked apartment in a residential high-rise And as a reward for the UNDP investigation and revelations in the Cash for Kim scandal, they are re-opening the program's office in Pyongyang. With Iran wielding the gavel at the UNDP you can rest assure that corruption will carry on at this UN flagship agency.
The Hamas Enabler-the UNRWA Palestinian Refugee program Israel's recent Operation Cast Lead in Gaza aimed at stifling Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket barrages against Southern Israel and the Western Negev featured prominent accusations about targeting by the IDF of UN schools used as launching sites. The UN agency involved is the 60 year old, UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East).
Rossett noted that UNRWA was originally established as a three year ad hoc agency. When the 1949 Armistice between Israel and several invading armies was reached in Rhodes, an estimated 750,000 Palestinian Arabs had fled homes in what is now Israel, at the behest of Palestinian leaders like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini. UNRWA has provided cradle to grave support for three generations of Palestinian refugees estimated at over 4.5 million in a network of camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Rossett deems the UNRWA system as a veritable welfare enclave for terrorists. She noted that the UNRWA schools in Gaza, engaged in teaching children how to become suicide bombers and making Israel a constant anti-Semitic scapegoat marked for destruction.
Rossett noted: Into this system flows an annual UNRWA budget now well above $400 million per year, doled out variously in the form of cash, goods, medical care, schooling, job-training programs and so forth. [The U.S. funds 31 percent of the annual UNRWA budget, while Muslim states fund less than 7 percent.] To handle these operations, UNRWA employs more than 24,000 staffers [including many members of terrorist groups Hamas and the PIJ]. That's more than any other UN agency, including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, which with some 6,300 staffers about one-quarter the manpower of UNRWA is responsible for all other refugees worldwide, totaling more than 11 million. At UNRWA, more than 99% of the staff is local Palestinians.
They sit at the many local levels of the UNRWA distribution machinery, which under UNRWA policy takes on the coloration of and yields to the policies of host governments as UNRWA officials explained to U.S. lawmakers who some years ago challenged the use of anti-Israeli textbooks in UNRWA schools. The UNRWA system that encourages welfare dependency in Gaza has another untoward consequence. The fecundity of Palestinian refugee women abetted by the UNRWA system generates a so-called youth bulge which is reflected in the proportion of young males aged 15-29 in the total Gaza population of over 1.5 million. In a fascinating analysis in the Wall Street Journal Ending the West's Proxy War Against Israel, ( http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233050207944&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull )
Professor Heinsohn of the Raphael Lemkin Institute at the University of Bremen noted: The reason for Gaza's endless youth bulge is that a large majority of its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA.
Unlike the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which deals with the rest of the world's refugees and aims to settle them in their respective host countries, UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian problem by classifying as refugees not only those who originally fled their homes, but all of their descendants as well.
Heinsohn also draws attention to the concept of managing surplus populations through conflict. This is a concept put forth by Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein, in his classic book, The Cunning of History: Mass Death and the American Future.
Heinsohn notes what has happened in the wake of the savagery of internecine Muslim Middle East conflicts: In such youth bulge countries, young men tend to eliminate each other or get killed in aggressive wars until a balance is reached between their ambitions and the number of acceptable positions available in their society.
In Arab nations such as Lebanon (150,000 dead in the civil war between 1975 and 1990) or Algeria (200,000 dead in the Islamists war against their own people between 1999 and 2006), the slaughter abated only when the fertility rates in these countries fell from seven children per woman to fewer than two. The warring stopped because no more warriors were being born.
Prior to her Tiger Bay Club presentation in Pensacola, I handed Ms. Rossett this question for response: New Jersey Congressman Steve Rothman has introduced Congressional resolutions to hold UNWRA accountable.
Will the Obama Administration, in your view, do anything to rein in this broken refugee system? In an email exchange with me following her Pensacola talk, Rossett replied: I do not expect the new administration to do anything to reform UNRWA.
On the contrary, I think the plans to push more diplomacy with Iran are going to make a dangerous situation much worse, and the last thing on the agenda is likely to be genuine reform of anything at the UN. Even John Bolton, who really tried, could barely move that ball.
The new UN Commission on Human Rights Rossett bought up the matter of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) that is in thrall to the OIC. Earlier we had noted the OIC's success at getting anti-Islam defamation resolutions introduced.
The UNCHR was headed by Libya in 2003, whose excesses allegedly lead to its reconstitution.
The UNCHR sponsored the Durban World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in 2001 that was a bully pulpit for PLO advocates to shout death to the U.S. and Israel.
Coming up in April is Durban II. Rossett in a Forbes.com essay noted this on UN anti-Semitism: [UN Secretary General] Ban is carrying on a deep-seated UN tradition of bias against Jews and Israel. That is broadly obvious from the UN's torrent of anti-Israel statements, resolutions and so forth, including plans to hold a repeat in Geneva this April of the UN's anti-Israel 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, ostensibly convened to discuss racism.
She cited the presence on the UNCHR board of Iran, Pakistan, Cuba, Russia, and members of the OIC like Egypt who will further the demonization of Israel and Jews.
Anne Bayefsky of the Hudson Institute, another long term critic of the U.N., in a recent New York Daily News op ed entitled: The UN's Insanity Continues, laid out the Durban II racist and anti-Semitic agenda: The United Nations anti-racism forum, known as Durban II, is becoming a more important test for President Obama's multilateralist ambitions with each passing day. Durban I was the anti-Semitic hate fest that ended three days before 9/11. Durban II - the UN equivalent of the Son of Sam - will take place in April in Geneva. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has called on Obama not to legitimize the meeting, or its message, and not to attend. Canada has decided to stay away.
But Obama has still not decided whether the United States will go. This Wednesday, however, the stakes got a lot higher with the UN's release of the latest negotiating text. Negotiators have now put on the table claims that (1) a homeland for the Jewish people is racism - a racially based law of return, (2) Israel is guilty of apartheid and (3) the veracity of the murder of one-third of the Jewish people during the Holocaust is subject to question.
A reference to Holocaust facts has now been square-bracketed because Iran and Syria have questioned the numbers of Jews that died and consensus is the only guiding principle governing the decision-making process.
In total, six provisions are dedicated to demonizing Israel as racist. Not one of the other 191 UN states is mentioned. The intention is clear: the political defeat of Israel in the same vein as apartheid South Africa, because repeated attempts at a military defeat of Israel have failed. Dealing with sending a U.S. delegation to Durban II, when our neighbor to the north, Canada and even troubled Holland, have resoundingly said no, will be one of the first items that Madame Secretary Clinton will face. It will be one of the first foreign policy tests for the Obama Administration. Clinton should take a leaf out of the book of one of her predecessors, General Colin Powell, who withdrew the U.S. delegation from Durban I in 2001. The question is, will she?
What to do about the Iranian Nuclear Threat? On the Iran nuclear threat, Rossett was trenchant. In her opinion, the UN will not do anything. She pointed to the Islamic Republic's defiance of five UN Security Council resolutions. After all, two of the UN Security Council permanent members, China and Russia, do business with Iran. Iran will get its bomb she said and use it to wipe Israel off the map of the world.
Rossett concluded, The wisest thing to do is bomb some of the nuclear facilities in Iran. It can't be done without risks.
Her final statement on the matter sums her overall opinion about the corrupt UN, The UN is a sand trap that will allow Iran to do what it wants.
The Tiger Bay Club presentation is a dossier presented by Rossett that sends a chilling message to most Americans, that corruption pervades the UN headquarters in Turtle Bay on Manhattan's East Side.
Posted on 2/6/2009 at 3:58 PM PST
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (26)
at 19:55 on February 9th, 2009
"Heinsohn notes what has happened in the wake of the savagery of internecine Muslim Middle East conflicts: In such youth bulge countries, young men tend to eliminate each other or get killed in aggressive wars until a balance is reached between their ambitions and the number of acceptable positions available in their society.
In Arab nations such as Lebanon (150,000 dead in the civil war between 1975 and 1990) or Algeria (200,000 dead in the Islamists war against their own people between 1999 and 2006), the slaughter abated only when the fertility rates in these countries fell from seven children per woman to fewer than two. The warring stopped because no more warriors were being born."
Indeed... :-) Just remembered a science fiction series by John Ringo - The Posleen Wars. Posleen are aliens and they eat their dead or even turn into cannibalism - and it is an honorable thing to do.
You can dowload them in ISO format from here
I dont know why I remembered this suddenly. :-))
Agent.
at 21:05 on February 9th, 2009
Thanks Agent
at 21:51 on February 9th, 2009
Hello Barry,
No- Brainer the UN is NOT Corrupt....quite the opposite.
I do not blame the UN for the Rwanda massacre...It would be like blaming Canada for doing nothing, or blaming the almighty USA for doing nothing. I do blame the people who did the killing....
Then to accuse the UN as corrupt is another propaganda tool by those who do use and support militaries to justify their power and acts of violence....Their goal is to make the people believe in the Military Establishment so they will give the military their tax dollars for support.
The Oil for food so called scam is case in point to discredit those who do not support the Violence agenda. What? .. it is OK for the US to blockade and levy food and medicine sanctions to innocent people which took a huge toll over a protracted 12 year period. If the UN did not step in to help the dying innocent people caught in the dispute between Iraq and the USA....that would be a scandal too...would it not? So I don't buy the BS by Claudia Rossett...you are parading around here.
Kofi Annon is most assuredly not guilty of the Rwanda massacre, or the Oil Scam orchestrated by the Paul Volcker fiasco....who was a complete lying fuck during the Reagan Administration.....who covered up all the bank failures that happened during his administration.....which ultimately is part of this huge worldwide economic meltdown.
Why the economic sanctions by the US? Because Saddam invaded Kuwait. Why did he invade Kuwait? Because they would not let him sell oil below the OPEC price so he could pay his bills, that were due......when he was fighting the Iranians. The US sold him all those weapons of Mass Destruction....and I bet all the money was not all paid in cash. So as the US is using Iraq troops to fight their enemy Iran, they refuse to allow Saddam to pay his debts, as they stole Oil from Iraq by their slant drilling from the Kuwait side.
Some will claim the opposite in which Saddam was angered that OPEC was dropping the price of oil to $13 a barrel and making it impossible for Saddam to make enough money to pay his bills....But I discount this...because it is clear OPEC prefers higher prices when those prices reached over $150 a barrel, and are still much higher at todays price at $40 a barrel.
{The Iraqi government had also accused the Kuwaitis of stealing 2.5 billion barrels of oil from its Rumaila oil fields by sliding drills into Iraqi oil pipelines. They had also accused Kuwait of exceeding OPEC oil production which had dropped the price of oil from $20 a barrel to $13 a barrel in the first six months of 1990. This meant 1 billion dollars less for Iraq everytime that price of an oil barrel went down by a dollar. Saddam said he would stop them from continuing aggressive action:"The oil quota violators have stabbed Iraq with poison dagger. Iraqis will not forget the saying that cutting necks is better than cutting means of living. O'God almighty, be witness that we have warned them".1 His foreign minister Tariq Aziz later said in a letter to the Arab league that Kuwait is "systematically, deliberately and continuously" harming Iraq by encroaching on its territory, stealing oil, and destroying its economy.1 "Such behaviour amounts to military aggression".1 These were just signs of the Desert Storm to come.}
http://www.publicbookshelf.com/history/terrorism-global-scourge/saddam-kuwait....
This led to the first Gulf War, forcing Saddam from Kuwait....making him out to be the bad guy. Of course Saddam wanted to eventually open the security dialogue toward nuclear security for the Middle East which has the worlds major Oil supplies.
All Middle Eastern Countries have these Oil resources, yet they have no Military Security to prevent Superpowers who have no vast quanties of Oil from invading their country.
Inevitably Iraq was invaded.. by the USA....and now Iran see's how essential it is for Iran to counter the West's Superpower Israel....from invading their country because they have the bomb.
America is a threat having been the only Nation in the world to use the Atomic Bomb. They used it on innocent civilians in Japan.....not even considering to target Japanese Military targets. Even General Eisenhower was against Trumans decision. Eisenhower was right.....because he knew it would be the beginning to America's creditability problem. No one trusts the USA... because the US will not look at nuclear disarmament as a position of strength. In fact it is strength because it eliminates the threat...America is and has been supporting a military option which really is a failed policy, representing weakness, and uncertainty for nations in the world. Militaries dissolve the ideals for committment..this erodes economies, and establishes depressive markets.....
America never speaks out against its own nuclear programs....yet its hypocrisy against other nations in the world is mind boggling. Now with the toppling of Iraq, and occupation in Afghanistan it is clear Iran will move forward with development. Iran will not use the bomb on Israel because the initial collateral damage will kill thousands of Palestinians, and it will have a negative effect on Iran....something they do not want to create.
This is why it is important for Israel to work out a peace plan so Arabs and Palestinians can live in Israel to thwart off nuclear threats to Israel.
Stop pointing the finger....and see that the corruption is Violence. Violence can not be stopped by using violence. People who believe that Good Violence against Bad Violence is justified.....are not living in reality because they rely upon force as the methods for change instead of the personal work that dialogue establishes. It is for that purpose in which Nonviolence gives mankinds its existence.
Rev. Jermano
at 21:06 on February 9th, 2009
Hey I never said they were corrupt, all I said was incompetent, and that my Friend, I stand by.
Thanks for the visit and the comments though, always welcome my friend.
at 21:55 on February 9th, 2009
Your title says corrupt Barry.... Incompetent meaning Violence is the signature of competency?
I call the US incompetent and irrelevant.
Rev. Jermano
at 16:01 on February 10th, 2009
Hey Buddy, I didnt make up the title, it was in the story!
at 03:29 on February 10th, 2009
People who look for villains generally find them! The UN has many faults: in particular it has to work and get agreement a few pretty shady countries and their diplomats. But that is a fact life, if the UN is to proceed through majority voting as well as the wholely antiquated Security Council., Yes, it needs restructuring; although Kofi Anan tried and failed because of the vested interests in the status quo. Yes, parts of the UN perform miserably. I would hold up the FAO as a pretty ineffective outfit. But others are magnificent, doing fantastic jobs with very little support. Yes, there have been terrible scandals (not many though). But this by no means proves that the UN is wholely corrupt. It is foolhardy of you to think so!
at 04:46 on February 10th, 2009
Hi Gerry...and thanks for your comment. The politicians especially in the USA have no idea what the UN is actually. The United Nations is first and foremost is Not a World Government. It is not a Private Organization, and not a Public Organization in the sense that it affords uninterrupted services....that being to which public in which nation is concerned. I liken the UN as an Epicenter where all nations of different sizes, cultures, political ideologies, beliefs, and attitudes come together in an attempt to create a meeting place to discuss world problems, situations, communicating to each other in an effort of support for peoples who suffer due to poverty, war, and environmental degradation, and one which is not often practiced which is to come together for socializing and friendship, for the benefit of all bodies.
Given the UN's definition as an Epicenter....makes it quite a unique Organization as a place for Countries to come together for dialogue. I liken it as the soft power...which to me has much more significant power than the hard power which is the use of the military to force their will upon another nation who is a member of the UN..
One could chide away on and off and say it is corrupt or incompetent....but those assertions make no sense concerning the definition of the UN and its real purpose....which is to promote Peace, and work for better relationships between nations.
America was the first to abandon the UN's council when it voted to not support War in Iraq. The US disregarded the UN's vote in effect saying their Democratic Vote was irrelevant...This prompted the animosity toward Kofi Annon....and they did everything they could to try and find fault with him by attacking his relief organization in bringing Food for Oil for the poor suffering innocent people in Iraq.
Bush literally disregarded the UN vote went ahead and attacked Iraq, while ramping up the John Bolton Spin Bullshit with the UN being corrupt in funneling money from the Food for Oil Program to Saddam for his Weapons Programs.....which was a complete fabrication....because after their invasion they never found those so called Weapons of Mass Destruction.... In fact GW Bush was going by intelligence they had from US munitions manufacturers who sold such materials to Saddam.
If anyone made a mistake of judgement it was GW Bush. Kofi Annon was correct that the US waged an illegal war...
Now with the worlds financial meltdown being felt....it is clear people have realized that the US is the main problem because of the poor management and decision making by the Bushmen.
What needs to be done is to understand what the UN is, and what its purpose is. I believe that the UN represents a doorway and method to go forward without using Violence and War as a prescription toward solving the worlds societal problems. I declare the UN as a Nonviolent World Organization...and its pronouncement should be clear to the world body.
Any nation that will think it can come and simply push the world around with weapons and bombs and killing and war....will find that soft power will ultimately shut them down.
In affect this economic financial crisis we all claim to be doomsday depressive 1930's happenings all over again....really is a blessing in a sense. Do we really think militaries are going to be going to war...when they know they are suffering on the economic side in their own individual countries? They are more prone to heavily think about it and realize that peaceful efforts are more desirable and achievable.
The economic crisis could be thought of as worldwide sanctions self materializing on a global scale....with countries impotent in stopping it because of the nature of the situation.
I know we are talking about the UN and its unique position and authority in the world, and most people have seen that the elite seem to get away with murder, while the people who suffer who are UN members are suddenly really the UN and are labelled corrupt...is the furthest from the truth.
What?.. the UN is going to come and arrest GW Bush...for his crimes? The UN is not a World Government that has the position to arrest people, put criminals on trial, or make judgements. Those issues are resolved by members of the countries involved.... Many know that Bush lied about going to war, having his statement that Saddam did not do 911, and there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction found. Given the many years of sanctions on the people of Iraq, and the illegal war that was waged that killed thousands of innocent people in Iraq, not to mention US personnel and soldiers, leaves one to wonder who will bring these issues to the fore? Certainly the UN will be a discussion center about this...and certainly those who do not want these things to be known are going to go forward with the lies and spin to how corrupt or incompetent the UN is...
In order to move the world forward...we need to come to terms with the Bush debacle. Of course we need to go forward thinking of the future....but we also need to make it clear and hope some sort of judicial declaration will settle the Bush malpractices, and give the world a clearer sense of hope for the legal system....as countries go forward in their plans for progress and prosperity. To leave it without thought or closure....will keep the gaping wound open.....and a continued distrust of those in the US government....who claim they support change.
The facts are clear.......and people are coming to the realization that Democratic Administrations need to be held accountable for their crimes. They simply do not disappear just because they were voted out of office, or their term ended. ..Doing nothing is not an option, and allowing people to get away with commiting crimes in office...makes Democracy a farce...if not a crime in it's own definition.
Rev. Jermano
at 16:02 on February 10th, 2009
Hey Guys. I just posted the story, I didnt write it!
at 17:42 on February 12th, 2009
Oh...I see Barry......thanks....I thought it was your title with a posted story....so whats the diff? She says Corrupt; you say Incompetent?.
Take Care Barry...
Rev.
at 18:58 on February 11th, 2009
Very excellent story.
I vote for incompetent and biased.
I would like to see the UN shut down, except for rrfugee work, which is maybe the only thing they are good at.
at 19:11 on February 11th, 2009
Thanks for your comments 158
at 12:50 on February 12th, 2009
Thanks Barry for the story. Well researched and finally a more balanced approach to the truth.
at 17:40 on February 12th, 2009
Yea right 158. and tikun .....the refugees you create from your occupation wars? How many kids you kill today?
Disgusting.
Rev.
at 08:52 on April 9th, 2009
This comment is childish and inflamatory and hardly befits your usual tone of reasoned argument. Very disappointing =/
at 20:49 on February 12th, 2009
Thanks Tikun and djermano for your comment.,
at 21:37 on March 21st, 2009
' Hey Guys. I just posted the story, I didn't write it! '
I certainly didn't see any evidence of the NP 'Highlight Tool' here.
Does this mean that only non-editors are forced to use it ?
I recommended this story because it is informative and thought-provoking.
at 00:58 on March 22nd, 2009
the highlight tool can be only used in firefox browser.. the addon can be downloaded from the link given in the website with the steps how to use it. in the tools tab
you can also start a highlight by putting
I hope this will help
at 07:42 on March 22nd, 2009
Or you could read the instructions at:
http://my.nowpublic.com/newsroom/tools/highlight/highlight
Unfortunately no one has yet created (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) a step-by-step screenshot or video presentation for many who find it clumsy or time consuming simply because they are happy to Cut, Copy and Paste as they've always been doing.
at 11:25 on April 9th, 2009
My Highlight Masterclass (the Citizen Kane of HOWTO vids) lives in the Forum.
at 19:39 on April 7th, 2009
Thanks Fred, the thing is sometimes the highlight tool works on my computer and sometimes it doesn't no ryhme or reason to it. I am no super computer whiz, I turn it on and off, that is about it for my expertise.
at 02:53 on March 23rd, 2009
I think its user friendly ready access is dysfunctional. You need to have firefox, to use it. I think NP could make their program more fluid to use, if it was a ready made item in the writing box, without additional downloads. How do we know what really those downloads are we put in our computers....know what I mean?
Rev. Jermano
at 04:58 on March 25th, 2009
Thanks all for your comments, its funny, sometimes the highlight tool works and sometimes it doesn't. I asked Jordan about this, and hope it gets fixed. Another thing I notice is that One news organization, the highlight works and another it doesn't. I am not too computer savy, but that is just my opinion.
at 06:06 on April 7th, 2009
Most excellent story really quite thought-provoking too i must say. unfortunately, haven't learned anything new. already fully realized long ago that the UN was totally corrupt, and should be disintegrated before most of our cities windup that way.
at 19:40 on April 7th, 2009
Thanks Ravinwood
at 16:55 on May 28th, 2009
Ravinwood 777 meant the US is totally corrupt.. I sure would like to compare the allegations of the so called Oil For Food Program up against the US Bank Scams, the liar loans, the mortgage crisis, the heisting of American taxpayer dollars of 700 billlion, and 787 billion for a fraudulent stimulus, and not to mention the many Bernie Madoffs out there. ..And it wasn't Kofi Anon who lied and went to war....over Weapons of Mass Destruction that were never found....... tsk. the finger pointing at the UN.....we know who the real crooks are in this.....including Harper and his cronies.
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13759.....
Rev. Jermano