Yes I do Walter. And more effective and efficient too. And hopefully in a way that won't take millions, possibly billions of dollars out of the mouths of hungry children.
Well, obviously the USA has got enough money than.
Well yes, as a matter of fact we do. I really doubt we'd be alone for long, however, as I don't believe we are the only ones horrified at the state of the existing UN.
U.N. staff in uproar over top leadership
By Marc Carnegie
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
NEW YORK — The U.N. staff union met yesterday to discuss a no-confidence measure against senior management of the world body, which has been rocked by a series of scandals involving top officials.
But sources said a planned vote could be put off until next week after U.N. officials asked to meet with union members to quell the uproar over any no-confidence vote in senior management led by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
"The idea is to keep dialogue going and see if we can sort out our differences so that it isn't necessary to adopt [the no-confidence] resolution," Annan spokesman Fred Eckhard said. "We'd certainly like them to have more confidence in us, and we hope that we can achieve that through dialogue," he told reporters.
A draft union resolution obtained by Agence France-Presse on Thursday complained of "a lack of integrity, particularly at the higher levels of the organization," and asked to "convey this vote of no confidence to the secretary-general."
The measure cites unnamed senior management, but both sides — faced with heavy press scrutiny after news of the resolution broke — insisted Mr. Annan was not the prime target.
Mr. Eckhard said it was a "misinterpretation" to call the measure a no-confidence vote in Mr. Annan, even though he is the most senior official in the United Nations.
In a press release, the staff union stressed that the draft text had not yet been adopted and said the measure did not "express the desire" for a no-confidence vote against Mr. Annan.
Sources said the immediate anger behind the resolution had been sparked by the announcement Tuesday that Dileep Nair, head of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, had been cleared of wrongdoing by Mr. Annan.
Mr. Nair had faced charges of harassment and favoritism but was exonerated after what Mr. Eckhard termed a "thorough review" of the case. Some accusations had been made in an anonymous letter, he said.
The staff crisis comes amid accusations of fraud and corruption in the U.N. program that oversaw oil sales by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.
Mr. Annan has publicly complained of a "campaign" against the United Nations over the oil-for-food program in operation between December 1996 and November 2003.
But it also follows the exoneration in July of Ruud Lubbers, the top U.N. official for refugees who had been the target of a sexual harassment complaint brought by a female member of his staff.
Mr. Annan cleared Mr. Lubbers of any wrongdoing in that case but reportedly sent him a letter conveying his "concerns" about the official's behavior.
Mr. Eckhard acknowledged the staff union was "not happy" with this week's decision on Mr. Nair, whose office functions as the U.N.'s internal watchdog, and said the question would be discussed next week.
"It's been a bit of an up-and-down relationship" with the union, he said, but added: "We accept them as the legal representatives of the staff."
Well, obviously you know more about how that could work than I do, and can judge public opinion in other countries better, too.
(That's a reply to fox.)
Libya chairs the U.N. commission on human rights. Enough said.
No, I really don't have any more information and/or insight into what others think than you do, Walter. But I trust in the basic goodness of humankind and can't believe all other people have such a different sense of right/wrong/justice/injustice than Americans do.
As I said, if the UN can be repaired/reformed I am all for fixing it. If it is too far gone, too self-absorbed, too timid, too ineffective, too corrupt to be fixed, then why keep supporting an organization that accomplishes little? Why not form an organization that can actually set and meet the goals deemed worthy by its membership?
Foxfyre wrote: Why not form an organization that can actually set and meet the goals deemed worthy by its membership?
I suppose, this is more a rhetoric question than meant seriously. :wink:
CalamityJane wrote:Quote:No more sappy stupidities such as Kyoto, Law of the Sea, or the ICC.
Why georgeob1,
Do you have an escape route out of this earth, once
it is overpolluted and not inhabitable any longer?
Long before that happens life on earth will be destroyed by a meteor impact or civilization nearly wiped out by the next ice age. Kyoto was an expensive remedy in search of a trivial problem.
In addition only 20 years after publication of the now discredited Erlich's "The Population Bomb" demographers confidently forecast that the earth's population will begin a fairly steep decline in about thirty years, due to precipitously falling birthrates throughout the develioed world (including China, where female fertility is 25% lower than in the U.S. and, more recently, India).
Sometimes the emperor really has no clothes.
georgeob1 wrote:In addition only 20 years after publication of the now discredited Erlich's "The Population Bomb" demographers confidently forecast that the earth's population will begin a fairly steep decline in about thirty years, due to precipitously falling birthrates throughout the develioed world (including China, where female fertility is 25% lower than in the U.S. and, more recently, India).
Sometimes the emperor really has no clothes.
Well, that's really what is said by now:
Quote:In the poorest countries of the world, population is soaring. With more mouths to feed, other national resources will be squeezed further, leading to food shortages, ill health, and environmental decline.
Population is expected to reach 9.3 billion by 2050, according to a United Nations medium projection from 2001, with 97% of the increase occurring in developing countries.
Yet the industrialised world has seen falling birthrates. The global fertility rate has halved in the last 40 years, and demographers now predict that the world population will eventually settle at about 8.4 billion.
Source
Dunno why there's so much emotionalism attached to the question of the future of the UN and its role in relationship to The US. I mean, how much importance can be attached to irrelevance?
IMO, the UN is a fraud-bound, corruptly, ineptly managed, hypocritical, socialist/globalst, ant-US debating society and cocktail circuit, impotent as regards international conflict and uniquely succeptable to scandal, though given to and capable of some charitable works, provided the going doesn't get too difficult. The concept was laudable, the execution has been pathetic bordering on criminal.
I see no point in attempts toward or prospects for the rehabilitation of the moribund travesty. The real estate occupied by their Manhattan campus would better serve the borrough, the city, the state, and this nation if returned to the tax roll, the strutures currently thereon converted to honest rubble and usefull fill, the leased properties housing their myriad satellite offices throughout the city would themselves be better utilized housing tax-paying, American-job-providing, economy-boosting, revenue-generating American businesses, and finally, the departure of the parasitic organization from the city would have grat and beneficial effect on overall vehicular traffic flow and free up scarce parking resources in the area currebtky blighted by its presence.
Kofi Anan and crew, including his son, Messrs. Savan, el Barradei, and Blix, and every member of each of their personal and administrational staffs, ought to be prosecuted for crimes both financial and humanitarian, be accorded significant prison time and finacial forfeiture, then be deported in chains. Whether the UN goes to France, Fiji, or Finland I could care less, just so long as goes and goes with all possible dispatch, leaving the US entirely free of its perfidious influence and odious presence. Dismantle it, be done with it, and try something different.
Other than that, I don't have an opinion one way or the other; the fate of the UN and of its ruling clique of hoodlums is a matter of extraordinary indifference to me. Why get emotional about it?
The difference between the UN and the League of Nations, is that Americans bankrolled one of them. American Imperialism gone wrong.
Although during WWI influential groups in the United States and Britain had urged the creation of the League of Nations, it was soon seriously weakened, by the nonadherence of the United States: the U.S. Congress failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.
Unfortunately, I don't have access to any
books about the League of Nation right now.
Could you please give some details of how it was financed, Asherman?
Well, I mean, you can't have meant the UN by your remark:
Quote:Top 10 Member States in assessment for the UN regular budget, 2002
Assessment rates Amount
Country (per cent) ($millions)
United States 22.000 283.1
Japan 19.669 218.4
Germany 9.845 109.3
France 6.516 72.4
United Kingdom 5.579 62.0
Italy 5.104 56.7
Canada 2.579 28.6
Spain 2.539 28.2
Brazil 2.093 23.2
Republic of Korea 1.866 20.7
Quote:Top 10 per capita contributors to the UN regular budget, 2002
Country ($amount)
Luxembourg 2.15
Liechtenstein 2.13
Japan 1.74
Norway 1.65
Denmark 1.60
Monaco 1.38
Iceland 1.35
Germany 1.34
Austria 1.31
Sweden 1.30
Quote:The total of unpaid assessed contributions leaps to $2.1 billion, with a staggering $1.8 billion owed for peacekeeping. Some 38 per cent of this figure -$690.9 million - represents outstanding contributions by the United States, with $373 million relating to the current period and $316.9 to prior periods.
sources: various UN and UN-related websites
all data as of latest published online (2002, as far as I could notice)
Walter Hinteler wrote:Well, I mean, you can't have meant the UN by your remark:
Quote:Top 10 Member States in assessment for the UN regular budget, 2002
Assessment rates Amount
Country (per cent) ($millions)
United States 22.000 283.1
Japan 19.669 218.4
Germany 9.845 109.3
France 6.516 72.4
United Kingdom 5.579 62.0
Italy 5.104 56.7
Canada 2.579 28.6
Spain 2.539 28.2
Brazil 2.093 23.2
Republic of Korea 1.866 20.7
Quote:Top 10 per capita contributors to the UN regular budget, 2002
Country ($amount)
Luxembourg 2.15
Liechtenstein 2.13
Japan 1.74
Norway 1.65
Denmark 1.60
Monaco 1.38
Iceland 1.35
Germany 1.34
Austria 1.31
Sweden 1.30
Quote:The total of unpaid assessed contributions leaps to $2.1 billion, with a staggering $1.8 billion owed for peacekeeping. Some 38 per cent of this figure -$690.9 million - represents outstanding contributions by the United States, with $373 million relating to the current period and $316.9 to prior periods.
sources: various UN and UN-related websites
all data as of latest published online (2002, as far as I could notice)
Based on this, it would appear that the US has not been the most generous of members or reliable in terms of its debts.
This is outrageous. I think the UN should kick the US out of its membership roll.
"Please don't throw me in that there briar patch!"
Br'er Rabbit
Finn d'Abuzz wrote:Based on this, it would appear that the US has not been the most generous of members or reliable in terms of its debts.
This is known since years.
Walter Hinteler wrote:Finn d'Abuzz wrote:Based on this, it would appear that the US has not been the most generous of members or reliable in terms of its debts.
This is known since years.
All the more reason to throw the bums out of the UN.
Arrears aside, it should be noted The US nonetheless is and always has been the single largest benefactor of the UN.
timberlandko wrote:Arrears aside, it should be noted The US nonetheless is and always has been the single largest benefactor of the UN.
Keeping the outstanding contributions aside, and not looking at the seize and population of e.g. Japan or Luxembourg: yes :wink:
The data Walter has presented here is accurate and his points about the somewhat hypocritical behavior of the United States toward both the League of Nations and the UN are also correct. The U.S. was both overly enthusiastic & ambitious during the process leading to the creation of these institutions and their potential roles; and, following their creation, unwilling to back up its earlier inflated rhetoric in practice.
I believe that, in terms of the historical results he achieved, Woodrow Wilson was, by far the worst U.S. president of the 20th century. He erred in getting us into WWI - a fight in which we had no interest whatever - and he did far worse with the enormous gulf between the unrealism of his inflated rhetoric in the "Fourteen Points" and the unhappy betrayals, greed, and stupidity that characterized the Peace negotiations leading to the Treaty at Versailles. The remainder of the unhappy 20th century was merely epilogue.
We, to a lesser extent, repeated the process with the United Nations. I say lesser extent because the parallel problems of the need for the European Empires to divest themselves of their colonies, and, at the same time, avoid widespread revolution in the context of the Leninistic "partial war" strategies of the Soviet Union, was partially met through the good offices of that organization.
We are in a new era now. Colonialism and Communism are dead, though we are still dealing with some of the legacies of both. The UN is, sadly, no longer a particularly useful agency for dealing with any serious, contentious problem. Not worth killing or abandoning, but not worth much investment either.
