The United Nations celebrated UN Day yesterday by praising itself in a multitude of ways (see UN press release, “Celebrations Span the Globe ^[1]“). Meanwhile, in the real world, Senator Tom Coburn marked the day by putting out a new web site to help address not the glossy UN image, but the gritty reality ^[2], noting that the best way to honor the UN would be to clean it up.

No one’s managed that trick so far. The usual routine is that a scandal erupts at the UN, and top UN officials deny, obfuscate, and maybe launch a Potemkin investigation or promise another hollow reform, until no one can figure out what’s going on — and then it’s time for another UN Day. But this year, Coburn has done American taxpayers the service of compiling a roster of current UN scandals. If you want to see what your money helps to support, from the UN’s glorification of tyrants and terrorism, to UN scams raking kickbacks off procurement deals and peddling illicit entry into the United States, it’s worth a look at United Nations Watch. ^[3]

(Note: The site includes quite a number of press reports, from a wide variety of sources, some of my own among them).