The Democratic Leadership Council, a faction of the US Democratic Party, is calling for the resignation of Kofi Annan as the only way to restore the UN’s credibility. The litany of condemnation includes:
Annan’s handling of the fallout over the past week has done nothing to improve his perceived credibility: He has refused requests from congressional committees for access to the United Nation’s 55 internal audits and other reports, or for the chance to interview U.N. officials who oversaw the program, saying that it would interfere with the Volcker inquiry. That inquiry is expected to release an interim report in January. The full report could take another year and cost as much as $30 million — to be funded with leftover cash in the oil-for food program.
The British diplomatic response as reported by the BBC is to condemn Americans as a “lynch mob”. Someone supposedly called “Lord David Hannay”, a former British diplomat is defending Kofi Annan from those redneck peasants (including the DLC).
Apart from the fact that calling someone “Lord David Hannay” is a most improper form of address, it turns out that this creep was “first secretary of the negotiating team for entry into the EC” according to the UN’s global security website. So if anyone got kickbacks for betraying the British fishing industry or agriculture, or the excessive payments by British taxpayers to the European Economic Community (as it was called then), Lord Hannay should know who got the brown paper envelopes. He may even know a thing or two about the massive fraud going on at the European Commision, as he worked there, but I prefer to believe that he is simply blind to the wrong-doing of others.
It seems that a bi-partisan alliance of critics of the UN may be forming in the US Congress. Obviously some Rebublican sceptics want the UN reformed others want it abolished. What the DLC report suggests is that the less blinkered supporters of transnational government can see that getting rid of Annan is their best hope for restoring credibility.
Shame that the BBC and “Lord David Hannay” are such provincial ignoramuses that they don’t get the message.
There are some who want the UN to leave the US and move outta the high rent district of NYC. I can’t say I blame them. Why should the UN stay in a country they obviously hate?
David Hannay showed similarly good judgement when UK ambassador to the UN.
When the slaughter in Rwanda became known he objected to the use of the word ‘genocide’ for fear the Security Council would become ‘laughing stock’.
He then went on to help draft the 21 April 1994 Security Council resolution which called for the withdrawal of most UN peacekeepers from Rwanda, leaving a skeleton force of 270 soldiers – just as the genocide was speeding up.
Hannay is simply another of those highly educated diplomats who are in the habit of going native and screwing those they are supposed to represent.
AID
I’m sure the UN is on sovereign territory. Time for border controls and economic sanctions then. Nahh, the US should simply take it back and expel the UN. The OFF scandal is so deep now that its fair to call the organisation an organised crime syndicate.
Odd how most people can grasp the UN corruption in this instance of the oil-for-food financial scandal, but nobody was alarmed by the far worse moral corruption of the UN.
The UN acts on a one man-one vote basis, and as such promotes the interest of the greatest number of it’s members; these are all tyrannies and corrupt kleptocracies. That’s what the UN always promoted: corruption, oppresion, lies, hypocrisy.
The UN is corrupted at it’s core, and it’s not a financial coruption. It’s not Kofi Anan that must go, it’s the whole of this nest of mafiosy and murderers, and leftie hager-ons.
Antoine, that reads like a neat summary of the British yellow press’ accusations against the ECC and then EU.
Quotas on fishing have only now been imposed after European and generally North Sea waters have been fished to almost empty, European common agricultural policy is annoying and way too expensive, but it certainly hasn’t damaged British agriculture (to the contrary, for it allows farmers to charge inflated prices, as anywhere else in the EU), and the “by British taxpayers to the European Economic Community” were nothing compared to what German taxpayers contributed the the ECC.
The UN is toast. It has never met it’s goals and has tried to switch roles to cover that fact (bait and switch might not have been invented in Texas, but they work hard on perfecting it in the Lone Star state). Read some of the UN position Papers on the UN web site. The UN makes no attempt to hide the fact that it considers itself a World Government. Welcome to the revolution.
I expect that Koffi will be given an official notice of intent by the US Ambassador ( whenever we can find someone that wants to go down in history as the Last American UN ambassador) about or shortly after President Bush’s inaugeration. It takes 12 months before the witdrawal becomes effective, and I suspect the Permenent members will be more then willing to offer up a whole slew (flock? hred?) of scapegoats. Koffi heading the list.
Won’t work, since the whole point of the operation is to get the US out of the UN, so that another world body can be created. One for Democracies ONLY.
The French can posture and huff about Paris as a new home for the UN, but even they can’t be stooopid enough to think that the UN will survive the withdrawal of the USA. And what about Russia? Like France, they are a 3rd World Nation, living on leftovers of the 20th century. Without their Perment Security Council status, both nations are just new layers on the compost heap of history. Koffi is in a very weak position, and he’ll find out how weak soon enough.
What amazes me is how dirt dumb the UN people are. President Bush doesn’t bluff. He tells you what he’s gonna do, then he does it. Dubbau stood up in front of both assemblies and told them if they didn’t change their evil ways he was gonna fook them. They should have paid attention to their quivering spincters.
The UN is bound for the ash heap right next to the Congress of Vienna, the Versailles Treaty, and the League of Nations. No international body or agreement lasts forever, and the time of the UN’s usefulness is over. The only thing really keeping it going is inertia and the unwillingness of the US to pull out, and believe me, they’re trying our patience.
If the US eventually pulled up stakes what purpose then would the UN serve? It’s edicts are already a laughingstock and the lack of enforcement power the US brings to the table would finally drive a stake in the vampire.
I hope Kofi stays on as long as he possibly can, and that the general assembly resists his resignation because we need to build up the resentment in this country until we’ve simply had enough.
The UN served its purpose – the Cold War never went hot. Now it’s an anachronism, and its well we all admit it.
What the internationalists do have right however is that there needs to be a place for “the right kind of nations” to get together and build the future.
Right now the only effective international body is the WTO. It’s a friendship built on business, and therefore stable and productive. The G20 needs to sit down and organize how they will share power in building a world safe for enterprise and wealth of all the world’s citizens.
Whatever comes next however cannot be, and will not be, limited to Democracies. Connectivity is more important. Economic development is the horse pulling the cart of human freedom. Right now India is politically and religiously free, but still very un-free economically. China is the reverse. Both nations need to be included however, because our knitting them in to the world economy will force them (later) to grant the freedoms their respective citizens lack today.
Bottom line: Any world order which excludes China (or Russia, Turkey, etc) for not being free “enough” is doomed to failure. China, Russia, and Turkey are moving in the right direction and are committed to further growth.
Put another way, do not repeat the mistakes of the Treaty of Versaille. Cutting Germany out of the world’s economy paved the road to WWII. Cutting all non-democracies out of the Next UN will do no better.
Right on the money, Brock. I’ve always felt that countries which attempt democratization before freeing their markets are getting it the wrong way ’round. Just look at S. America if you need evidence of that.
China is going about their reforms in precisely the correct way, because a democratic country which is dirt poor is unlikely to stay democratic for long.
Ralph Goergens
“yellow press”? – pro-imperialistic newspapers in New York circa 1890? Eh? Yeah Yeah. Anybody who opposes the European Union is a C19th imperialist. The very language you use reveals the shallowness of your thought.
You attack Antoine for claming the Health government betrayed the British Fishing industry
“The story begins in 1970, when Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Norway were about to apply for membership of the Common Market. The original Six saw that these four countries would control 90 per cent of Europe’s fishing industry. So they prepared a cunning plan; just hours before the application arrived they declared that all fish in Western waters would be regarded as a Common European Resource. This was illegal under the Treaty of Rome, and the Six knew it was, but they gambled on the Euromania of Heath; that he would accept it as part of the acquis communitaire. They gambled successfully; publicly the government line was that they would take proper account of the interests of the fishermen. Similar soothing words continued for a while, but a decision had to be made by January 1973. In November Heath wrote a letter to the Norwegian government, imploring them to accept the principle. The leaking of this letter caused a major row, leading to Norway’s rejection of entry in a referendum. But Heath was not to be moved; the 22,000 British fishermen were politically insignificant. Heath’s co-conspirator Rippon agreed privately to accept the surrender of all Britain’s fishing waters, in return for a face saving 10 year derogation, giving British fishermen rights out to six miles, with more limited rights out to 12 miles. Rippon misrepresented the situation to the House; We retain full rights up to 12 miles; no change at all in the protection to British fishermen in their inshore waters; these are not just transitional arrangements.”
Anybody in the UK with the slightest knowledge of the EU knows all about the despicable way the EEC – and its political defenders – behaved over British fishing rights, so for you to seek to defend the EU on this ground shows just how pathetically misinformed you are about even the basic realities of European Union as it affects the United Kingdom.
You supplement your assertion that the Common Agricultural Policy has not damaged British agriculture by admitting it is “annoying” and “expensive”. A few facts and figures will be useful here.
CAP cost 30 billion a year
It adds £9 a week to the average families food bill
It encourages the use of intensive farming, and because the EU cannot use all its agricultural products so it undermines third-world farming by dumping heavily subsidised exports on the world market.
70% of its funds go to only 20% of farms [small farmers account for about 40% of EU farms but receive only about 8% of available subsidies]
British taxpayers pay £5 billion a year into the Common Agricultural Policy but only £2.2 billion comes back to British agriculture.
In other words, for every £1 we pay to help British farmers, we pay £1.50 to help their European competitors. The Commission is not generally in favour of free trade. It is quick to introduce protectionist measures to defend the broader Community interest – as in the “banana war” with the US. What it does do is prevent Britain from protecting its own agriculture, in favour of supporting different systems in the other member states. So for example due to the milk quota system set by Brussels, EU farmers have surpluses, which, they are then allowed to offload onto Britain and thereby undercut home producers. Therefore, we get neither the benefits of free trade nor the luxury of defending our own interests. In the EU British farming gets we get the worst of both worlds.
As for the cost of the EU, it costs the UK about 10 billion a year in direct contributions and about another 10 billion a year in costs that are imposed by EU regulations. The fact that Germany pays even more in contributions is hardly an argument against the claim that it is a waste of money. Crudely speaking, Germany and the United Kingdom has paid for it, and so now the United Kingdom, having done its bit, can withdraw and bask in the sort of gratitude that Germany receives for all the money it has spent, or for that matter the sort of gratitude that the USA receives in France for liberating it from, well, Germany.
Brock, Any world body that INCLUDE despots and tyrants is bound to fail to promote Democracy. The point of the whole exercise is to promote capitalist democracies. No nations with that have McDonalds have ever gone to war with each other. What you seem to want is a ‘nice’ UN. No such thing. The UN is functionally inable to act in any manner other then what is does now. To bore you with detail, the New UN (NUN) should Have a 3 tier membership. An upper house (for want of a better term) that has one State from each region and a lower house with the rest in it. Then there can be a third layer of nations that are NOT democratic but are trying. One assembly will propose resolutions, the other vote on them. NUN shall address only Economic issues. Trade between nations. Sort of a combined WTO, G20, and INF. Other then economic NUN should have no power of any type. The power of the purse should be enough.
“The world does not need a new framework of treaties, least of all a world government, but the freedom to prosper as nations on a planet in which everything except oppression is permitted. For it is self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that the only excuse for government is to secure these rights and that these words can be translated into every living tongue.”
-wretchard
Democracies usually don’t wage war on each other. If they did, the 5th and 6th fleets would be running Alpha strikes on French targets today. So the indirect approach to a safer, saner world is to spread the Siamese twins of democracy and capitalism.
Chris,
you got a link to go with that quote about Heath et al?
I am sure this has nothing to do with Bill Clinton expressing his ambition for the UN Sec General spot…
Hank Scorpio and others – the UN is surviving first, obviously because it is supported by the majority membership of kleptomaniacs, oppressors, dictators and daylight robbers. D’accord.
But its lifeline is: “Oh, the UN itself really needs to clean its act up” – nope; too late – “but the work the agencies do makes it all so worthwhile! The WHO – they eliminated all these awful diseases! (by Western and Israeli scientists who were perfectly capable of doing it without the WHO) and the Save the Children and UNCTAD and the education deal, oh, and those valuable relationships with the World Bank and we’d have to leave the constant warnings about looming ‘humanitarian disasters’ to the International Red Cross and it’s just not fair that they should get it! and the High Commissioner for Refugees (a Gilbert & Sullivanesque title if ever there was one; I can already hear the music) has such worldwide respect!” blatty, blatty, blatty.
Brock – On China, I will cede you your point, but India is one of the oldest democracies in the world. It is unthinkable that there be a club of democratic nations and admit India through the back door. It’s been a democracy as long as Germany, for example.
That said, I don’t think democracy is a particularly great qualification. France is a democracy. So is the famously democratic Spain which obeyed an al-quaeda directive on how to vote in its general election. “Countries that have common ends” would winnow out the crappy dictatorships, yet admit China because it is economically powerful and thus we need it on the team, and it needs us.
Hank, I agree with your second post.
Chris Goodman – I can only say Yowza!! Also, for those who missed the slaughter of over a million healthy animals at the direction of the EU and with Tony Blair’s enthusiastic compliance, bow your heads.
Stehpinkeln: “Any world body that INCLUDE despots and tyrants is bound to fail to promote Democracy. The point of the whole exercise is to promote capitalist democracies.”
I don’t agree that they should have to be a democracy to get in. Why would we care? We just want capitalists. The Chinese are capitalists (heavily disguised, but anyone who’s ever lived in a Chinese environment knows they are capitalists). Capitalism won’t thrive without individual property rights, and from individual property rights flows democracy. Let’s not be too prissy out this. We want countries that will serve our purpose. Capitalism gives us the commonality of purpose.
Ralf,
I got the quote about Heath et al from
http://www.rogers.cwc.net/semper-fidelis.html
I do not know anything more about the site – I am guessing it is not pro-EU! – but I used it because I know enough to say that on this issue at least he gives a brief but accurate summary.
Ralf,
This seems to be where Chris found his quote. I have no idea how valid the site is.
The Democratic Leadership Council is calling for Kofi to resign as a means of restoring ITS OWN credibiity, not that of the UN.
The Democratic Leadership Council is calling for Kofi to resign as a means of restoring ITS OWN credibiity, only secondarily that of the UN.
Chris,
I have to look into this, this seems like a bit of a biased source, to say the least. 😉
Correct Larry !
People think, and hope that the UN can be saved by sacrificing Kofi, and then declare the UN reformed.
Nonesense.
The UN is a racket for protection of despots and tyrants, and for wasting horrendous amounts of good money on empty words and plush jobs for leeches.
Let the kleptocrats have their UN for themselves. Decent people should run away from it, and not participate in this feast of corruption.
Jacob, the UN is kept afloat by the USA. There has never been more then 20% of Americans that actually support the UN. Since it’s inception about 20% of Americans wanted out of the UN. The Majority could care less, one way or the other. Those numbers are changing as a result of inaction on the part of the UN. Here in the sea of read, the UN has all the appeal of homosexual marriage, almost.
Koffi is preventing a full disclosure of the Oil for Fraud scam. He is doing so becuase there are worse turds then OFF floating around in the UN’s punch bowl. When Koffi goes there will be a big bag of bones dragged out of the closet. There are experts here in America at assembling those bones into skeletons. The outcry to get the US out of the UN will reach a point where it cannot be ignored, even if the politicians wanted to, which they don’t. Koffi is fooked. Well and truly fooked. No way of telling if Rove and Condi created this sitituation or are just taking advantage of it.
Off Topic, but has anyone else seen the ‘new look’ Michael Moore? Shave and a haircut. I think he looks like Rush Limbaugh with glasses. You don’t suppose they are twins seperated at birth?
The moral cowardice of the conservatives (in the US) is manifest in the UN scandal. The conservatives don’t beleive in the UN, they don’t want it, they hate it, yet they are willing to compromise with the left, and avoid a fight over the UN. They are trying to save their capital and energy for other fights that seem more important (like stem cell research) and are willing to let the left have it’s UN even at a cost of zillions $ wasted, and UN’s corrupt posturing and hate America talk feasts. Disgusting.