Time To Go Kofi!

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by IntheNet, Dec 1, 2004.

  1. NoodlesMacintosh

    NoodlesMacintosh New Member

    Aug 24, 2004
    Salt Lake City
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I'll accept that. We're no angels. Our military is mostly all tied up elsewhere--now whether that's for good or bad reasons I'm not going to debate. Regardless, they're occupied. So what about everyone else that signed up? Why are they still sitting on their hands?
     
  2. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan PLANITARCHIS' BANE

    Paris Saint Germain
    United States
    Apr 8, 2002
    Baltimore
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    So do I. And all political bodies in this discussion must clean themselves up; the UN and the US. If we agree on that, then I think we agree.

    I wasn't upset. I was laughing. What do you believe?
     
  3. NoodlesMacintosh

    NoodlesMacintosh New Member

    Aug 24, 2004
    Salt Lake City
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I believe the responsibility of an organization for the conduct of its members gets a little tricky. If a member screws up by its own volition, I don't think the organization is to blame. If a member screws up because the organization told it to, or screws up because the organization let them get away with it, then the organization is to blame.

    If I teach my kid his whole life to not steal, and then one day he decides to steal, I don't think that's my fault. Ultimately, my kid is going to choose to do what he's going to choose to do, be it in or out of line with what I've taught him. If I teach my kid to steal and he steals, it's my fault. If I don't teach my kid anything about stealing and he steals, it's my fault.
     
  4. dj43

    dj43 New Member

    Aug 9, 2002
    Nor Cal
    The US has sent millions of $$$ to assist African nations, and continues to do so. Much of that aid has been sent directly to avoid the inefficiency of the UN.



    In addition to my above comment, I would add that the logical extension of that argument is the equivalent of saying that the state of Iowa should be ashamed of the excessively high murder rate in Oakland, CA.

    Once you sign up, and give money and political support for the organization, you have the right to expect that organization to do what you have authorized it to do. In this case, the UN has failed. Repeatedly. With Kofi Annan at it's head. Blaming the US is neither fair nor accurate. In fact, one could make a case that the US has done more for Africa than the UN. To wit; the US has given more $$$ to combat AIDS victims and treatment in Africa than the entire UN IIRC a recent CNN report.
     
  5. Norsk Troll

    Norsk Troll Member+

    Sep 7, 2000
    Central NJ
    And that's your response to the United States' failure to take any action in Rwanda? 'Sorry, boys, we gave at the office?'

    That is not the logical extension, since the State of Iowa never signed a document wherein it agreed to prevent crime in another State (local crime under our Constitution remains a local affair). If criminals from Oakland fled to Iowa, however, and Iowa refused to give them up to California, in that case Iowa would have something to be ashamed of, because the Constitution DOES provide for extradition from state to state (Art. IV, Sec. 2, Clause 2).
     
  6. dj43

    dj43 New Member

    Aug 9, 2002
    Nor Cal
    You missed the entire point.

    The US has been criticized for not waiting for the UN to take action in Iraq. OK, fair enough. In Ruwanda the US gave the UN all kinds of support and they UN did nothing. If you want to support the UN, then you must show that it can do SOMETHING to deal with the problems there.

    In the meantime, the UN has become embroiled in a huge controversy in Iraq where they were supposed to be solving a problem.

    Can you truly not see the failings of the UN here? This not about a comparison with the US. The UN is supposed to be above nations. Comparisons should have no position here. Either the organization is capable of solving problems on it's own or it has no useful purpose. If it needed military support it could have gotten it if it asked. I can't imagine there is a country in the world that was not aware of Ruwanda yet Kofi fiddled while children died. By the tens of thousands!!!!!!!!!!!!
     
  7. NoodlesMacintosh

    NoodlesMacintosh New Member

    Aug 24, 2004
    Salt Lake City
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It actually seems that you missed the point here. Norsk Troll wasn't saying that the UN is competent in this--rather, that it has been very incompetent. However, the US also has blame to carry due to what it signed up for to prevent genocide.

    He (She? Is that you in your avatar?) specifically said, in response to the question if the UN should shoulder blame for Rwanda and Somalia:

    The UN has dropped the ball. The US has dropped the ball. We all acknowledge this. You're arguing against a stance that hasn't been presented.
     
  8. DutchOven

    DutchOven Red Card

    Nov 16, 2004
    THE LARGEST BRIBE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND-$21 BILLION

    WAKEN up and smell the Kofi scandal: that has become the preoccupation, focus or spectator sport among the caviar connoisseurs in the United Nations headquarters in New York and their implacable enemies in the newly renascent Republican Party. After 59 years of corruption, incompetence and impotence the UN is being brought to book. The immediate catalyst is the Oil-for-Food scandal in Iraq; the likely victim is the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, whose coat is now hanging on an extremely shoogly nail.

    The real scandal is that the UN was not discredited and dissolved many years ago: there is no organisation in the world more hypocritical, greedy and power-hungry (although the European Union is coming up fast on the outside lane). Insofar as the United Nations has any significance, it is as a sinister template for future World Government. Its strength has been to exploit the guilt complex of western citizens, posing as a vehicle of material improvement for poor countries and as a forum of world ‘peace’, while cynically pursuing its supremely selfish agenda. Naïve young people who have never been exposed to religion embrace the UN’s secular, one-world, brotherhood-of-man cant as a substitute.

    It is all as phoney as the similar fraternal slogans of the Nazis and the Communists. If you hear news of any catastrophic famine in Africa or Asia, you may be sure the delegates of the nation concerned are swilling champagne and guzzling foie-gras in New York in solidarity with their emaciated countrymen. The latest corruption scandal is typical of this merciless indifference to suffering among the world’s poor. The Oil-for-Food scheme aimed at permitting Saddam Hussein to export a limited amount of Iraqi oil, exempted from economic sanctions, to enable the régime to buy food and essential medical supplies for the population.

    This scheme began in December 1996 and continued until the fall of the dictatorship. The Iraqi people, however, did not benefit. Saddam did a deal with the administrators of the programme and with France, Russia and China, enabling him to evade sanctions while lining the pockets of his collaborators. The UN administrator of the scheme, Benon Savan, reported directly to his chief, Kofi Annan. Savan has been accused of siphoning off half of the 14 million barrels of oil allocated to the UN as its fee. Kofi Annan’s son Kojo had worked for Cotecna, the Swiss-based company that was awarded the main contract, and last week it emerged that he was still receiving money from Cotecna while the programme was in operation.

    The scam that took place was on an almost unimaginable scale. It only came to light as a consequence of the capture of Iraqi government documents at the fall of Baghdad. By April this year scandalised critics were claiming, in good faith, that the amount of the embezzlement was as much as $10bn, the greater part of which went to Saddam Hussein. They were wrong: the latest estimate is $21bn. During the period of the scheme the infant mortality rate in Iraq soared, hospitals festered and the population starved.

    Why is anybody surprised? Graft and corruption is the leitmotif of the United Nations. Soldiers of the UN peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone were accused by Human Rights Watch of systematic rape of women. In Bosnia, UN police stand accused of trafficking in young women from eastern Europe as sex slaves. Staff of UN relief agencies and peacekeepers have similarly been denounced for sexual abuse of refugee children in Liberia and Guinea. On October 28 this year, a report from the UN’s in-house watchdog revealed that Kofi Annan had personally dismissed the claims by an American woman staff member of sexual harassment at the hands of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, overruling the findings of an independent UN investigative panel that endorsed the allegations.

    Yet nobody talks the feminist talk like the UN. Despite these sordid realities, its International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) is claiming that its $500,000 budget is inadequate for its important work and a further $1.31m is needed. The reaction of any woman in an area of conflict to the sight of a blue beret provides a more realistic assessment of how the organisation is regarded by those who have direct experience of it.

    Human rights is another great UN shibboleth. Yet its interpretation of this subject is eccentric, to say the least. The repeated re-election of Cuba to a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission epitomises the moral tone. The Castro régime, since 1959, has imprisoned more than 100,000 people and shot 16,000. Never say the UN apparatchiks lack a sense of humour. So far as western ‘progressive’ opinion is concerned, the only human rights abuse ever to have taken place in Cuba was in the Guantanamo Bay compound.

    The United Nations neither wishes nor is able to protect human rights. In Bosnia, 600 Dutch UN ‘peacekeeping’ troops stood by as hundreds of civilians were killed in Srebrenica. During the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s, the UN spent more than $75m on building and refurbishing apartment blocks for its administrators and aid workers, while its failure to assemble vehicles for transport left vital food supplies rotting on the dockside. Nor has it learned any lessons: in the recent crisis in East Timor, the UN spent more than $50m putting up hotels and supermarkets for hoped-for tourists, while ignoring the need for hospitals and welfare projects.


    Whole Article

    They really should abolish this pimp factory.
     
  9. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan PLANITARCHIS' BANE

    Paris Saint Germain
    United States
    Apr 8, 2002
    Baltimore
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and China rallied around U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday, but President Bush did not explicitly endorse the U.N. chief...

    Of course he didn't.
     
  10. dj43

    dj43 New Member

    Aug 9, 2002
    Nor Cal
    Germany, France and Russia made a lot of money from Oil for Food. No surprise there. China found Iraq a convenient trade partner. Britain is really not a big surprise though no one would put their response in the same glowing terms as the first 4. The fact the US did not "explicitly endorse" Kofi shouldn't be a big surprise either.

    If you start from the normal premise that what you see is only the tip of the iceberg, then you will come to the conclusion that the corruption will be huge and very apparent when it all comes down. Let's wait and see.
     
  11. dreamer

    dreamer Member

    Aug 4, 2004
    Let's say Kofi goes, then, who's the best candidate for the job? An Asian, an Easter European, or an American?


     
  12. Caesar

    Caesar Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 3, 2004
    Oztraya
    Well, it certainly won't be a Yank.
     
  13. dreamer

    dreamer Member

    Aug 4, 2004
  14. CosmosKramer

    CosmosKramer Member

    Sep 24, 2000
    Yokohama
    Club:
    Yokohama F Marinos
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  15. bojendyk

    bojendyk New Member

    Jan 4, 2002
    South Loop, Chicago
  16. Mel Brennan

    Mel Brennan PLANITARCHIS' BANE

    Paris Saint Germain
    United States
    Apr 8, 2002
    Baltimore
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    Uh, wow. I wonder when we'll get back to affirming the best of all our institutions...maybe this will shut the heads up and allow those who want to get to work to do so...
     
  17. dfb547490

    dfb547490 New Member

    Feb 9, 2000
    The Heights
    I'd love to see either Clinton or Havel. Neither would get it, tho. Any replacement for Korrupt Kofi would just be another 3rd-world kleptocrat--the 3rd-world kleptocrats who run the General Assembly wouldn't have ti any other way.
     
  18. bojendyk

    bojendyk New Member

    Jan 4, 2002
    South Loop, Chicago
    Havel would be an amazing choice, but he's getting up there in years and has had some recent health issues.
     
  19. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    1. I don't think the UN will have an American General-Secretary in my lifetime.
    2. I was completely gobsmacked to see alex mention Clinton!!! If he can't get it, and Barack Obama can't get it in 2029 or whatever, like I said, won't happen in my lifetime.

    The best part of Clinton getting it would be the thousands of strokes suffered by wingnuts around the nation. There won't be enough hospital beds. I mean, really, the veins in Rush's head would burst and spray like an SNL skit.
     

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