We’ve hit another of those seasons in which it’s simply getting hard to keep track of the UN scandals, outrages, hypocrisies, chronic nonsense and spectacular failures of the moment — between the allegations of Guns-for-Gold, Cash for Kim, diamond smuggling in Zimbabwe, fraud at the World Meteorological Association, the recent conviction of the head of the UN budget oversight committee for laundering kickbacks in cahoots with a UN procurement officer, the current bribery trial of another UN procurement officer, the lingering and massive questions still surrounding Oil-for-Food; as well as Zimbabwe heading the Commission on Sustainable Development, Iran re-elected to the Disarmament Commission, the obscene and useless “reformed” Human Rights Council, and the rolling series of peacekeeper sex scandals. Plus, of course, the chronic failures to help North Korean refugees or stop the genocide in Sudan — and, naturally, the gross failure to prevent North Korea from getting the nuclear bomb and Iran from pursuing it full tilt.
If you go to the official UN web site, it’s not much help in getting a handle on all this. Today I was browsing through the highlights in which the UN is busy condemning, urging, promoting, responding, you-get-the-idea, including such announcements as “Sport Can Produce Valuable Results in Development and Peace — UN Official” (the sports nuts of the dictator brat pack come to mind; for instance, Leo Mugabe, Seif Qaddafi and the late Uday Hussein).
While we should perhaps give credit that the UN with its $85 million-plus annual budget for public information has chosen thus to honor the visions of George Orwell, or perhaps Franz Kafka, there is a need for a web site that does a better job of organizing the UN news of the day. We already have one terrific resource, Eye on the UN , which provides documents and commentary (disclosure: this includes some of my own articles). But there’s still room for a site that breaks down the latest developments into basic categories, easy to follow — for instance, “Sustainable Sex Scandals,” “Cover-Ups in Progress,” “Bribery and Kickback Cases,” “Failed Resolutions to Contain Rogue States” (maybe these should also be made available in tastefully printed boxed sets) and “Hypocrite of the Week.”
Lest that sound negative, there should also be a section devoted to genuine good works and real heroes. The pity, of course, is that there are good people within the UN system — many of them much distressed by what goes on around them — but they work for an institution that is in violation of the same human rights standards to which it gives lip service, and if you add a section praising them by name — “Honest Defenders of the UN Mandate” — they’d be at risk of losing their jobs.
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1. Alex Reed:Sometimes, when the world has taken a sharp turn into surreal Kafka territory, into an age of delusion, as it surely has at the UN, the US State Department, and other venues, the only thing to do to keep heart, mind, and soul together, is to follow one’s heart and feet, and join in a dance on the edge of the precipice. So, count me in. The recondite world of the UN could use more illumination and understanding! What shall we call this new and useful webistic endeavor?
May 30, 2007 - 11:34 am 2. Bloodthirsty Liberal:Possible Website Names // Department or Section Headings
• The UN Spectator
• The UN Daily Guddle
• ONU Soit Qui Mal Y Pense* (chapeau à Jean Hesse, le formidable, qui était là à la creation!)
* “Honni soit qui mal y pense!” King Edward III // ONU - Organization des Nations Unies - soit qui mal y pense // Au nu soit qui mal y pense…..
• The Chronicles of Turtle Bay (lost Narnian materials approach?; or, for a more si-fi version of UN events?, etc….)
• Private Eye on the UN (for a more realist recounting of events at the UN, webmistress, Georgette Bataille)
• Castle Life on Turtle Bay: UN World at Work and Play
• UN Reality Sandwiches
• The Lower Depths of Turtle Bay
• Lost Illusions: UN World at Work and at Play
• UN World: Tales of the Turtle
• UN Tatler
• In Another World: UN Life and Times
• Du côté de chez Ban (French language version)
• La tortue enchaînée (chapeau au Canard) (investigative reports section)
• Chroniques de l’ONU: Le vice appuyé sur le bras du crime (Chateaubriand) (Peacekeepers section)
• Dead Souls - Life in the UN Castle (weekly spotlight on a UN “personality”)
• Soros Bulba (ongoing section on history of George Soros involvement with UN)
• The Vicious Circle (section on UN Human Rights Council)//or//section on NGO’s (Le cercle vicieux… v. Talleyrand)
• Greed is Good (v. Gordon Gekko) - (adventures in accounting section)
• Another Hero (section for anonymous contributions from staff)
• Tales of Benji (The roman-feuilleton section. Benon Sevan’s adventures in the Secretariat)
• Give it All (section on the budget department’s creativity)
• The Thirty-eight Steps (section on up-and-coming denizens of the HQ’s 38th floor)
• Red Dreams in the Chamber (section on worldwide socialist démarches by the UN)
• Security (UN Security Council section)
• Supernatural Thing (exploits of the UN’s mystery facilitator*)
* Sorry. This comment started out as a lark. However….. I have to say one serious word about the three Israeli soldiers abducted last summer by Hamas and Hizbollah. Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev. In all the multitude of press conferences attendant on all the multitude of diplomatic meetings that have taken place in and about the Middle East since the last, late, lamented war in Lebanon last summer, these three names should have been constantly on the lips of every western, Israeli, and UN diplomat. I never heard them. Our State Department has been quick, of late, to legitimize all manner of terrorist regimes from Hamas to Iran and Syria. Since the brain trust at State was determined to follow this, in my view ruinous, course, could they not have demanded, at least, the release of these three young men as part of the price of sitting down? In Israel, where the survival and safety of the nation seem to have been marginalized in the headlong rush of the Olmert government to retain power, Winograd Report or no, the stolen fate of the three soldiers is little mentioned. For their families, time and life must have stopped last summer when the three were taken. I cannot even imagine how they move from day to day in what must be for them an unending nightmare. They deserve the active and urgent help of all democratic governments. They deserve more than a UN mystery facilitator. There was a time when the great and good were better than they have shown themselves to be today.
I do my best, Claudia, but I’m only one man. I use your invaluable site, Eye on the UN, UN Watch, plus any random news reports I can get my hands on.
The complete picture of diamond-smuggling, sex-trafficking, Cash-for-Kim, Oil-for-Food, the Human Frights Council, plus the rampant, everyday Israel-bashing is pretty ugly–but it’s as complete as I can make it.
Bloodthirsty Liberal
May 30, 2007 - 12:57 pm