We both have red rep's......need I say more? The UN in a waste of the United States time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE give me bad rep for saying that!!!!!!!!!!
They're still pissed that Johnson offed Kennedy using Mafia contacts that Bobby tried to get rid of....wait, the same contacts that Joseph used to help Kennedy get elected...
I got 20 bucks that says that the Today Show defends Annan. Takers?? Hope that your relitaves aren't from Danfur!!
Actually, it's Kofi's son, not Kofi, who is accused of being corrupt. Kofi's "crime" is that the UN was right about Iraq, and the neocons were wrong, so they have to find someone to blame other than themselves, since modern conservativism treats personal responsibility as Satan treats holy water. Maybe if the 'wingers clap really hard and wish really hard, they won't have created a disaster in Iraq.
This is all a natural outgrowth of the idea that the UN is an entity in and of itself. It is not. The UN exists at the pleasure of its member states. If the domestic sovereign governments of the member states each choose to disband the UN, there is nothing that "the UN" can say or do about it. Once we start realizing that, then we can start cracking down on UN corruption.
With Kofi Annan at it's head, the UN did nothing to stop the genocide in Somalia, Ruwanda, Nigeria; you name it, the UN did nothing. All the while this Oil for Food mess was getting bigger and bigger. 3 SC member countries who opposed any action in Iraq now clearly were making money on the status quo in Iraq. This man has been the head of this organization at a time when it has accomplished less than ever in it's history even though there have been numerous opportunities. IMO, it is time to replace him. Too much scandal and ineffectiveness surround this man.
Your thinking is debased on so many levels, but mainly, how can you lash out so contemptuously about Bush, when, though he may be involved in alot, clearly has nothing to do with Kofi & Son stealing food from starving Iraqis--all the while being against ending inspections so their 30,000 dollar kickback checks came regularly. Also, I think you are kettle blackening and twisting ideologies. If anything, isn't personal responsibility certainly a conservative "platform?" Supporting the welfare checks, univeral/communistic healthcare, graduated income tax, and all that are leftist, union, anti-personal responsibility platforms. perhaps you were just typing too fast or something.
This report may be, in many ways, a step in the right direction, to the extent that member nations commit to the revised framework. But this is not really about Kofi at all; rather, it is about competing geostrategic and geotactical visions. With the UN "getting tactical," the US I fear will eventually claim that the UN is treading on actionable territory it claims as it's own. This may be the first step toward Neocon withdrawl from the UN completely. Let's hope that 2008 sees a return to the framework that has led to a degree of stability and institutional, rational conflict resolution , one comprised of an effective UN and World Court and international legal system. Oddly, I don't hear those claiming UN failure (and thus the failure of global frameworks) calling for Supachai Panitchpakdi's head when he rules, regularly, against US interests.
This is simply political payback. Kofi backed Kerry, Bush won, and now it's time for retribution. How very Christian.
So you somehow excuse the UN's total lack of effectiveness in dealing with these problems? This is the very organization that some here have claimed the US should have relied upon to solve problems in Aghanistan & Iraq. Go back to Bosnia where Clinton gave up on the UN as well. Does your political ideology completely blind you to the fact the UN has solved no significant world problems for years??? Since it is very unlikely the present UN structure can be changed, then there needs to be new leadership that can achieve results. Kofi has not done the job. How can you look at all the failings and come to any other conclusion. How does anything that Bush has done trump the failings of the UN in Africa?
What problems has any nation or world body "solved," and specifically when was the last ime the UN "solved" anything?
Well, the USA has stopped slavery within its borders, although racial and ethnic equality still isn't there with African-Americans and Native Americans. You don't even have to have ditched slavery to be a part of the UN--look at Brazil and Nigeria. Also, the UN is responsible for organizing the body that eliminated small pox. So there's something.
While I think you mean legal chattel slavery, your above statement, that the US has stopped slavery within its borders, is not quite true. In fact, Victims of forced labor come from numerous ethnic and racial groups. Most are “trafficked” from thirty-five or more countries and, through force, fraud, or coercion, find themselves laboring against their will in the United States. Chinese comprised the largest number of victims, followed by Mexican and Vietnamese. Some victims are born and raised in the United States and find themselves pressed into servitude by fraudulent or deceptive means. Over the past five years, forced labor operations have been reported in at least ninety U.S. cities. These operations tend to thrive in states with large populations and sizable immigrant communities, such as California, Florida, New York, and Texas—all of which are transit routes for international travelers. Forced labor is prevalent in five sectors of the U.S. economy: prostitution and sex services (46%), domestic service (27%), agriculture (10%), sweatshop/factory (5%), and restaurant and hotel work (4%) (see p.14 of the above link for complete data). It is true that except for laboratory stockpiles, the variola virus appears to have been eliminated. So there's one. My point is that most of the problems the UN deals with may be solvable, but not with member nations as they are currently instituted, and that's not the UN's fault, that's the current nature of the nation-state.
I don't mean to be contrary, but I actually wasn't talking about that. Stopping things like that is, to say the least, difficult. Now, if these examples were of government-sanctioned slavery, then I'd concede the point. So the whole is not responsible for the failings of its parts?
Yeah maybe we should give Kofi's job to Arnold. Save us the trouble of a constitutional amendment. But can one still seek the US Presidency if he's already the General Secretary of the UN?
Heheh. Every one of his suggested resolutions would be backed by the US, Austria, and absolutely no one else.
LOL! Of course the UN, in all the different ways one can reasonably say it is constituted, is responsible for its efforts and undertakings, to the extent that the members who comprise it are committed to the UN fulfilling those responsibilities. But what's making me laugh is, apply that analysis to the pass you JUST GAVE to the US government and today's forms of slavery within the borders it controls!!!! You just gave it a pass for not officially sanctioning it (although passive sanction might be a debatable assertion); but in ANY case, isn't it responsible?!?!?
My question at the end of my last post directed towards you was just that, a question. I wanted you to answer it. I didn't say that's what I believed. Calm down. Serenity now.
To get back to the original question; are we to then not hold the UN responsible for the lack of ANY successful action in Somalia, Ruwanda, etc? The scary part of that answer is that we just concluded an election in which John Kerry proposed using the UN as the primary tool for resolving world issues. Now you are admitting they are a useless organization, a fact proven by the lack of action under Kofi. I am not a proponent of abolishing the UN or even of the US pulling out. However, if it to maintain any effective status within the world community, it must clean itself up. The Oil for Food deal is just the latest failing but not even close to the worst. I rank the hundreds of thousands dead in Africa far ahead of OfF.
Yes. But you also better be prepared to hold the United States responsible. Article 1 of the 1951 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a treaty to which the United States is a party, states that: "The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish." [emphasis added] The Contracting Parties, which are the individual countries, bound themselves to prevent genocide when they signed that treaty. Not to sit by idly unless and until the UN did something. Each country, including the US, bears the shame of not having lived up to its promises.