Immune to U.S. law, and now getting a $2 billion renovation of its headquarters where thousands of international staff work in NY, the UN acts as a gaping portal into America for who-knows-what. Among the culprits nabbed in recent years, in cases in which the evidence of wrong-doing was so rife that the UN Secretary-General took the rare and entirely discretionary action of waiving their immunity, there have been perpetrators of money laundering, bribery and visa scams on UN letterhead. On the broader front, there was the buzz of activity with which private agents of Saddam Hussein — hauling bags of cash – fringed the UN Oil-for-Food program, and of course such howlers as the UN Development Program quietly providing funds to fly officials of the North Korean government, business class, to its board meetings in NY — this being the same nuclear-proliferating North Korean government that was recently caught by U.S. Senate investigators laundering money in 2002 through UN-related accounts. Now, Fox 5 News takes an in-depth look at one of the UN security guards, video here. She says she’s done no wrong, and doesn’t know what they’re talking about. They report. What will the UN decide?   

“We are North Korean defectors who staked our lives to escape from Kim’s cruel dictatorship. We will cooperate with those who are of one mind with us wherever they may be, whether in the north, in the south, or in a foreign land. We will, to our utmost, expand the anti-Kim Jong Il force within North Korea and form a united front with those in North Korea.”

That statement above is an excerpt from a declaration released by a group of North Korean defectors last week, during what has become an annual event in Washington: North Korea Freedom Week. Organized by Suzanne Scholte of the Defense Forum Foundation, in coordination with other NGOs, church groups, and scores of others, including North Korean defectors who fly in from South Korea to speak out about the totalitarian state of Kim Jong Il, this is a gathering at which the moving message, again and again, is that the real answer to North Korea is not to pamper and appease the murderous missile-selling nuclear-happy tyrant, but to look for any way to advance the cause of freedom in the world’s most repressive state — and especially to help the refugees who try to escape. This can’t be said too often, so I have said it again in my column in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.

There is plenty more to be said — but for the moment, just a quick quiz. We know that hundreds of thousands have tried to escape North Korea, fleeing into China. We know that most are desperate, often ill, hungry, and in some cases starving. We know that if they get sent back to North Korea, they can end up in labor camps where people are starved and worked to death, and that some would-be defectors have been executed in public, as a deterrent to others. So, knowing all that, where has the world — or for that matter the well-heeled UN High Commissioner for Refugees — provided refugee camps to which North Koreans who risk their lives to cross the border can go for safe haven:

A) There are no refugee camps

B) There are no refugee camps

C) There are no refugee camps

 D) All of the above

Yep. Whatever you picked, you got it right.

When Israel’s air strike last September destroyed Syria’s secret nuclear reactor, built with the help of North Korea to crank out plutonium on the Euphrates, Israel did more in one morning to advance the security of the free world than anything that has transpired in the past 17 years of feckless resolutions at the United Nations, or in the last three years at the Six-Party talks on North Korea. But who’s speaking up to say Thank You? Since the White House confirmed almost two weeks ago that what the Israelis hit was indeed a clandestine nuclear plant, built with no apparent purpose other than to make bombs, there has been a lot of earnest discussion and analysis — but if anyone outside the blogosphere has been saying a heartfelt thanks, it’s been so low-key I’ve missed it. On April 24th, the day the administration briefed the press, Bush welcomed Palestinian President Abbas to the White House, and told him “thank you” for coming. But in the White House press statement that day about the briefings on the reactor, Israel was referred to only by implication, as a sort of ghostly presence behind the passive voice; thus –”that reactor, which was damaged beyond repair on Sept. 6 of last year…”

Actually, it was Israelis who took the risk of flying into Syrian air defenses, and it was Israelis who took the risk of Syrian retaliation, and it was Israelis who ensured that Syria’s Yongbyon replica on the Euphrates would not become a factory supplying material to arm some of the world’s worst regimes with the world’s deadliest weapons. This was a blow on the side of the Free World, which is beset — like it or not — by a global war that is at core about who we are, and what we value. Seems like America should not be shy about telling allies like these, Thank You.

Have you ever noticed that whatever the crisis, the UN’s first response is to call for more money to go the UN? Never mind if the UN is already sitting on a hoard of unspent cash, meant to feed, clothe, shelter and help the victims of the crisis. Thus within days of the 2004 Asian tsunami did we see former UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland slamming as “stingy” such bigtime UN sugar-daddies as the U.S., thus did former former Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his handpicked former head of the Oil-for-Food program, Benon Sevan, lament the funding shortfalls of an Iraq aid program in which even after all the billions in grafting, skimming and smuggling, the UN by 2003 still had more than $12 billion parked in the bank.

And now, it turns out that the World Food Program, while issuing dire warnings about a food crisis and the immediate need for at least $775 in extra funding, has been sitting on a cash hoard of more than $1.22 billion. Fox News has the story, complete with links to the UN audit containing this information, which was endorsed by WFP executive director Josette Sheeran  just weeks before a conference at which she called for loads of fresh cash — part of the UN chorus on this issue in which Ban Ki-Moon as well has been calling for money, money, money and more money – claiming the WFP has only $18 million cash on hand.

And what does all the money, money, money really buy? Well, one thing it doesn’t buy is adequate oversight of how the UN spends all that money, money, money. For more in the never-ending series of UN scandals, see the latest from Inner-City Press on secret audits of the UN’s own investigative audit section. (Note: At the UN, even exposing the problem does not necessarily mean it will be addressed. These are the realms of jam tomorrow, never jam today).  Seems like it would be a lot more helpful to the hungry people of the world if such donors as the U.S. were to simply cut out the money-stuffed UN as middleman, and give out bags of food and stacks of cash direct.