Samizdata

Tony Millard writes about Nigeria, Cameroon and Russia from the middle of Tuscany.

Two days ago I got a typical Nigerian fraud scam email and, in a spirit of light-hearted humour, forwarded it to a few people with a preamble to the effect that USD$ 5,000,000 fee for giving my bank account details to someone in Africa was a good deal and should be pursued with enthusiasm as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I got the usual responses from the usual people (i.e. more or less polite trying to ‘appreciate’ the joke) but one stood out. It was from the wife of a friend of mine, who worked for the UN for many years in Africa.

I think it makes great reading and confirms what we already know, that the UN is a pointless bloated gravy train that has nothing to do with Africans, who seem to be written off by them as some sort of cattle, and everything to do with driving around in large 4x4s and going to self-serving meetings at my and your expense.

I reproduce is the email below in full, witholding the name of the person as the couple are good friends, despite their employment history…

Dear Tony,

I just read your mail “Blessing In Disguise”. I suppose it is a joke, not being very good at sensing British humor. But in case it is not, I just want to share a few things from my own experience. You know that I have worked in Africa with different missions for the UN in the 90s, the longest one being in Cameroon, a country neighboring Nigeria. Camerooneese are very violent people and my life was several times in danger. However, compared to Nigerians, they are angels. I have been told by UN and World Bank officials never to set foot in Nigeria. It is a country where pistols and knives are used daily especially in Lagos. I have heard of people having rented a car who had to go to their hotels naked, stripped from their clothes, their money and car stolen. Even the Cameroonese avoid Nigeria.

When I came back from Cameroon to Paris, the only Cameroonese woman I trusted there, a young lady employed by the government, called me to let me know that she was arriving in Paris for a visit. I was gearing up to do everything to help her but immediately upon her arrival, I received an official call from the UN people inquiring if she was staying with me and telling me to get rid of her immediately. Apparently, after my departure from Cameroon, she together with a group of other women, had visited the police to lodge a complaint against me, accusing me of spreading propaganda against their government.

Imagine that! I worked for their government. My contacts at the World Bank later told me that once I were back in Cameroon, I’d be chucked in the underground of the airport where they would probably let me rot for days in the horrendous heat (for comparison, Tuscany temperatures in the middle of the summer are positively winter-like there).

The problem with the people in these countries is that corruption, violence and deception are ubiquitous and not addressed by the police, as such behavior appears to be the norm in their mind. You cannot trust anybody. Frankly, I’d rather go today to Iraq than any time to Cameroon or Nigeria.

Btw, similar precautions apply to any deal in which the Russians are involved…Our good Lithuanian friend, when he was doing business in Russia, never travelled without a pistol in his pocket and always accompanied with two ‘gardes du corps’…

Tony, let me know very quickly that this is a joke so that I stop worrying.

XXX

Nicolas Chatfort write the obituary of the UN, an organization whose statist premise makes its impending passing something few at Samizdata.net will shed a tear over

We are witnessing a major historical turning point in history. The world order envisioned by the UN is on its deathbed and unlikely to be revived. The world order I am referring to, however, is not the one enshrined in the lofty words of the UN charter. No, that vision died long ago, in fact as soon as the signatures were given in San Francisco. The idealistic vision of an international community working harmoniously toward common ends died stillborn when despotic regimes, whose very existences were alien to the goals set out in the charter, were allowed to join. The idea that the legitimacy to US actions is dependent on the views of countries such as Angola, China, Guinea, or Syria is absurd.

Realpolitiks, on the other hand, have underpinned the UN for over half a century. The myth behind the UN is that it an organization designed to maintain international peace through collective security. Nothing could be further from the truth. The strength of the UN has always rested on a grand bargain between the US and the other democracies of world. On the one side, the US would agree not to return to isolationism after WWII and promised to use its military force to provide a protective umbrella to its weaker partners. On the other side, the democracies would provide political support to US actions around the globe, thus enhancing the legitimacy of these actions. The Security Council has been effective only when it has been aligned with the interests of the United States, on whom it has been dependent for military strength with which to impose its will. No other country or collection of countries can adequately substitute for the US military.

This bargain has now been broken. France and Germany no longer feel that they have an obligation to support the US. In fact, it now appears that France views the weakening of American power as one of its major diplomatic goals. Although in the past French posturing has been a nuisance for the US, it had always returned to the side of the US when it mattered. The recent French actions in the UN, however, are unprecedented in that Paris is now working actively to undermine the US position. The obstinacy of the French position suggests that Paris is more interested in bringing the US to heal than Iraq. Chirac is mistaken if he believes that the US will acknowledge UN paramountcy over US security interests. The UN cannot function without the US military power to back it up and the US will not long remain a member if it comes to view UN more as an impediment to US security rather than as an aid.

Nicolas Chatfort

Reading a number of anti-war libertarian blogs such as that of the estimable Jim Henley, it occurred to me that among the various errors in their positions over what to do about Saddam, etc, is a tendency to dismiss or downplay any threat that such countries may pose to us.

Now, I am not going to engage in some long ramble about why I think the case for war is correct (though I think it is). However, what I do want to do is briefly reflect on what I think is an aspect of the anti-war libertarian position which could prove damaging to libertarianism more generally. It is the problem of evasion.

In recent years, libertarians have been aware of a growing threat to our free society, namely, the Green movement. And much time is spent, rightly, dismissing or pulling apart the scare stories (such as the Greenhouse Effect, population explosion, etc) that are offered to justify wholesale government controls over our lives. But a nagging question is – what would libertarians do if the Green case is partly, or even wholly, correct? What if global warming is as bad as they claim? What would we fans of free-wheeling capitalism do about that? It is simply not good enough for us to trash the Green case without at least working out how we would cope with such issues.

It seems to me that the isolationist libertarians who rubbish most government attempts to crack down on terrorists and their state sponsors need to answer a similar sort of question. How can free, minimal state societies deal with serious threats to liberty and life? What sort of measures should such societies take?

I think we owe it to ourselves to pose such questions and come up with a few ideas. Attacking governments for trashing civil liberties and ramping up defence spending is of course a good thing for libertarians to do, and we must continue to do so. But not offering any positive suggestions on how we defend ourselves is not just unwise. It threatens also to make the libertarian movement irrelevant.

And frankly, I don’t give a toss whether such worries make me a ‘neo-libertarian’ or whatever. I am not interested in going to my grave knowing that I died like a good disciple of Murray Rothbard. I want to stay alive with as much freedom as possible. It is about time that we worked on a few ways to achieve that.

Consider the gauntlet thrown on the floor.