Nations United In Inefficiency And Corruption

It's time for the United Nations to be disbanded. It should be more than obvious by now that it is faced with two problems, either of which might be insurmountble, but taken together amounts to almost assurred self-destruction.

The first problem is the bureaucratic inefficiency that afflicts all large organizations, compounded in this instance by international cultural barriers that make this bureaucracy an ingrained necessity, not merely an aspect of it's Byzantine size. It is a veritable labrynthe of contradictions.

The most obvious example of this is the fact that this is an organization that purports to promote peace, and even more laughably, freedom, and yet in which the majority of it's member nations are a collection of dictatorial regimes and terrorist enabling and/or enabled states.

In the meantime, the majority of it's truly democratic nations are represented within the agency by shills for  giant multi-national corporations. It is these same influences, unfortunartely, that are the only truly relevant arbitrers within the UN able to reach across the vast divide of the various contradictory and conflicting goals and policies of the member nations. They have their own agendas, which have little to do with maintaining peace, justice, and most especially, liberty.

It is this which more than anything is the result of the massive and barely uncovered Oil-For-Food scandal, a perfect example of how what was purported to be an effort on behalf of a beleaquered national population-in this case that of Iraq's in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War-was hijacked by the corrupt forces that run the agency and turned into a vehicle for exploitation, graft, and international embezzlement which not only allowed the misery to continue unabated, but actually increased it measurably.

Corruption and inefficiency, of the kind that enables UN peacekeeping forces to participate in the rape of women and young girls in African areas they were sent into ostensily to protect, about which nothing has been done yet. Once word of the UN's atrocities got out, sure, there was the predictable hand-wringing and angst and promises of investigation and prosecution. I have yet to hear the name of any UN peacekeepers arrested and charged, assumming there was ever a serious investigation by this agency that at the same time seems obsessed to an incredible degree with every rumour or inuendo of American abuse in places such as Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, which were and are in most instances relatively minimal in comparison.

Bureacratic inefficiency and corruption. A far cry from what the organization was originally created for. The UN was from the very beginning riddled with problems that would be difficult to overcome, but at least in the beginning it provided some hope, a promise of providing a forum for international dialoque and peaceful arbitration of disputes. So where and when did it go wrong? When did it go sliding over the edge into the morass of from which I doubt it will ever extricate itself.

I think you can find the answer to this simply by looking at an overall history of the UN, and that of it's member nations within the organization. And you need go no further back than a mere thirty years. For it was during this time, sometime in the mid nineteen seventies, that the United Nations made a fateful decision. It was a decision on the side of tyranny and oppression, and against the side of democracy and liberty.

At the time it was considered actually a diplomatic coup, this success in bringing within the fold of this brotherhood of nations the behemoth People's Republic Of China, headed by the Stalinist regime of Zhoiu En Lai, Mao's successor, and which insisted that it would only agree to membership on one condition. This of course amounted to a demand for the ouster of the small, seemingly inconsequential island nation of Taiwan.

This nation had been formed from the remnants of the itself dictatorial regime from which the communists originally rebelled, who took control of the island and, under the protecting guidance of the US, adopted over the years democratic and economic reforms which in time made it one of the most progressive and advanced nations of Asia.

As such, though it was far from perfect, it provided a needed base in Asia, and was a solidly dependable US ally, and showed promise over the years of becomming a true bastion of freedom, democracy, and human rights. On this beleaquered island nation, ture Chinese culture was allowed to flourish, and trade with the west made it one of the most prosperous economies in the Asian world.

But China demanded, and received, assurrances of an official "One China" policy, a policy which included the island nation of Taiwan. Shamefully, the US agreed to this policy, which is recognized to this day.

There was a debate, of course, but it was a matter of mere form. The overall result was a matter of foregone conclusion. Within a short period of time, representatives of the Peoples "Republic" of China took their seats at the organization, while the Taiwanese were summarily dismissed in what had to have been seen, from the cultural vantage point of the Chinese population of the island, as the ultimate insult and humiliation.

It might have been seen as a necessity at the time. And true, the Chinese did make the concession not to  invade the island, not to take it by force.  But as any rape victim might tell you, a rape is a rape is a rape, whether it be accomplished by actual physical force, or by coercion. The Taiwanese have now for thirty years been undergoing a kind of coercion, to which the world community has respounded with a hearty "fuck you".

And since that time, the UN has only gotten more audacous in it's grasp and demands. It has proven inefficent at best and more often than not toally useless in resolving international disputes, to the extent that wholesale massacres are the norm, not the exception, in vast areas of Africa.

Insofar as the Middle East, look at their record. The infuence of the Arab and Muslim nations within  the organization have insured the continuation of bloodshed, by demanding ceasefires in conflict after conflict which never seem to be of lasting duration, or if they are, have little or anything to do with any kind of UN involvement. The only exception to this, the 1991 Gulf War, was the result of pressure actually by neighboring Muslim nations of Saddam who wanted him put in check.

By the same token, look prior to this at the nearly decade  long war in the eighties between Saddams Iraq and the Ayotollah's Iran.  It would be too easy to criticize the effectiveness or lack thereof of the UN in this matter-first you have to find some evidence of their actual presence.  Here, you need look no further than the infuence of the same international business interests I mentioned before, and their lackeys, including, it is sad to say, probably especially the US. Too much was riding on the outcome of this conflict that was of vital economic and strategic importance.

And so, for the United Nations, this became a matter of international war and diplomacy as spectator sport. Nor were the United Nations any more effective in dealing with the results of the Soviet Unions invasion of Afghanistan. The list of failures goes on and on, while the only exception to be noted, besides the previously mentioned 1991 Gulf War, might be the Serbian Bosnian  conflicts of the mid-nineties, and even this was mainly influenced by European determination to prevent hordes of Albanian Muslim refugees from flooding into their countries, by the potential millions.

The only other success, though this is way prior to the inclussion of the Chinese to membership, would be the Korean War, which was actually a mere stand-off which is on-going to this day, and which becomes more tentative with each passing year. And that would never have transpired had the Peoples Republic been a member nation. In fact, there can be no doubt that the dynasty of Kim Il Sung would have soon engulfed the entirety of the Korean peninsula, and this would more than likely be the situation this day.

So what it all comes down to is that the effectiveness of the United Nations is dependent on the whims, desires, and demands of the most influential and/or tenacous members. It is nothing to do with peaceful arbitration or international dialoque, and everything to do with  the same graft, corruption, and international embezzlement schemes that made the Oil-For-Food  scandal  almost wholly synonymous with the term United Nations.

To sum up, if the powers that be at the UN have an agenda that is best served by peace and international compromise and cooperation, then something might get done. Otherwise, millions can die, and suffer, and all they will get is the same hearty "fuck you" the Taiwanese got thirty years ago.

And even in those rare instances where peace and compromise is achieved, the main beneficiaries are those who are the arbitrers of the disputes, and their international financiers and business interests that enable them Sadly, the duration of the value to them in terms of economic and political benefits is all too often exponential to the lasting duration of the peace achieved.

Little wonder then that the United Nations is revilled, hated, by more and more Americans, who look with suspicion at every proouncement from the mouth of Kofi Annan or any other figure of major importance within the organization. So when they make pronouncemnnents demanding an unconditional cease fire in the current Israeli/Hezbollah conflict that engulfs Lebannon, people naurally respond with, "there they go again", as they know all too well that such a cease fire without concrete moves to disarm the terrorist organization would doubtless result in, somewhere down the line, yet another round of hostilities, which would probably amount to even more disastrous results. As this seems to be the cycle. One conflict ends, and another eventually begins, which ends up greater than the one that preceeded it.

Nor are Americans kindly disposed towards UN insistences that the US and the rest of the world adopt international standards as to gun control and the death penalty. Whatever their reasonings, it has nothing to do with who is right or who is wrong. Simply put, it is simply none of their business.

And now, even more ominously, they are on the move on some kind of creepy drive to gain control of the Internet. According to them, this is merely to insure avialiablilty of internet access to everyone in the world, of all nations. It has nothing to do with any kind of desire to censor material and information.

Well, I don't believe them. Given their past record, why should I? And even on the off chance it were true, again given their past record, how can anyone be assurred that this would not in time fall under the same aura of coruption and inefficiency as almost eveything else they've ever touched.

Bueaucratic Ineffiency. Corruption.

I've always said, if I were to make a list of every thing or group or person in the world, and rank them in order from the most valuable, on down to the least valuable, and finally on down to those I most despise, the UN would fall somwhere under Al-Queda. That is really saying something, and in fact if I were to get some kind of information that the UN was due to be hit by Al-Queda or some other terrorist group, I would have to think long and hard before deciding whether or not to take that information to the proper authorities. I guess it would ultimately depend on the potential reward involved.

But on the other hand, I have to say that is a ridiculous thought. I would never be in a position to come into possession of such information to begin with, and if I were, I am sure such an event would never transpire.  Why would Al-Queda attack the UN? That organization is one of the best friends terrorist organizations and their supporters have ever had. In fact they rank right up there with the San Francisco Bay area - well,  Berkeley anyway.

At any rate, the UN should be disbanded, or at least entirely overhauled to where it is to all intnets and purposes an entirely new organization. Unfortunately, I know that neither one of these is likely to transpire in my lifetime, or if it does I'll probably be drooling and carrying on conversations with my shadow.

Still, I can't help but note that, in the course of typing this post, at various points in the course of editing, I had inadverdently typed the name of the organization as "The Untied Nations".

Now, I really like the sound of that. All nations of course have a degree of more or less bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption, this is unfortunatley natural. But all the United Nations manages to accomplish, at least up to this point, is to take all those tangled webs of bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption and mix them all up together into one big mass of a tangled mess.

I don't see it ever getting any better than that.