One way to bury a scandal is to hold a confidential investigation, ignore the findings and pension off the alleged culprit. The United Nations, helped along by diplomatic immunity, does this with such expertise that it’s surprising they haven’t set up entire agencies devoted to this art. Or maybe they have. At the UN, top management has been sitting for more than two months now on a confidential report from the UN’s own anti-corruption task force alleging ”gross negligence” and diverted funds within — I’m not kidding — the UN’s own good governance office. Does Ban Ki-Moon care? Or is he too busy jetting around the world opining that we should let the UN serve as world’s chief rationer of energy? More on UN lessons on how to indulge in bad governance and get away with it, in my article in today’s New York Post.
For connoiseurs of UN scandal, it seems the UN official currently busy burying these latest signs of institutional rot in his “In” tray is Under-Secretary-General Sha Zukang, a member of the UN Management Group which Ban Ki-Moon chairs.
Who is Sha Zukang?
He’s one of China’s men at Turtle Bay. Based in New York, Sha runs the UN’s sprawling Department of Economic and Social Affairs — an influential position with broad reach, spending lots of money (including lots of U.S. tax dollars) around the globe on all sorts of nebulous projects — including the dissemination of principles of governance.
That bears thinking about, because in a previous incarnation, Sha was based in Geneva as an envoy of the People’s Republic of China, busy shaping the disastrously warped dictator-friendly UN Human Rights Council (which replaced the grotesquely twisted Human Rights Commission). Among Sha’s functions, from 2004-2007, as described in his UN bio, was “Coordinator of the Like-Minded Group of the Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council.”
What was this “Like-Minded Group” that Sha Zukang coordinated, and on behalf of which he gave speeches urging the UN to avoid the practice of ”naming and shaming” the world’s worst human rights violators? It was a group of about 20 countries consisting largely of some of the world’s worst violators — including Sha’s own China, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Burma, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
As if today’s swap of the bodies of kidnapped and murdered Israeli soldiers for live Lebanese terrorists were not sickening enough, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon weighs in to hail the deal. Saying he hopes “this will be the beginning of many to come,” Ban applauded this triumph for terrorism as a victory for “the leadership and initiative” of the UN’s mystery “facilitator” — an unnamed German official appointed back in 2006 by Kofi Annan (assuming it has been the same “facilitator” since then, and that this is not just a handy UN label for anyone and everyone who on the UN’s behalf happens to be glad-handing Hezbollah and its Iranian terror masters).
Maybe the better term for the activity of this acclaimed anonymous UN facilitator would be fauxcilitation. This is UN “diplomacy” on a par with the fauxtography that came pouring out of the Hezbollah camp in the 2006 war.
In lauding the “prisoner exchange,” as the UN calls this swap of coffins for terrorists, Ban totally ignores the terms of the UN’s own Resolution 1701, (if the UN’s user-unfriendly document system blocks you out, here’s another link to the text of Res. 1701) adopted by the Security Council on August 11, 2006. This was supposed to end the war that Hezbollah launched in July 2006 by kidnapping from inside Israel the two soldiers — Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev — whose bodies have now been redeemed by Israel at staggering cost — with terrible implications for the future security not only of Israel, but of such places as New York (where Ban Ki-Moon, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, currently resides). Resolution 1701 stated clearly the UN’s aim was “the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers.”
Has Ban Ki-Moon even bothered to read that clause? Or do UN resolutions mean as little to the UN Secretary-General as they do to Tehran and Hezbollah?
On the matter of Lebanese authorities preparing a hero’s welcome for the terrorists sprung by this UN-facilitated deal — dealt out to the Israelis as anything but “unconditional” — Ban has so far remained silent. Perhaps he is too busy with UN efforts to ladle hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid into Lebanon, where a UN lacking a definition of “terrorist” is busy, in effect, helping to construct the launching pads for the next war.
Bailouts, inflation, bills up, savings down… Time to re-visit the funniest video ever made about the Federal Reserve. I still don’t know who these geniuses were at Columbia Business School, but here’s the brilliant youtube clip that first made the rounds when President Bush passed over former Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Glenn Hubbard, and appointed Ben Bernanke to chair the Fed: Every Breath You Take.
Good thing no one from the New York Philharmonic wandered off for a stroll when the orchestra performed for the Pyongyang elite in February. This week, while vacationing at North Korea’s Mount Kumgang resort, a 53-year-old housewife from South Korea, Park Wang-ja, went for an early morning walk on the beach — and according to North Korean officialdom, strayed too far. So a North Korean soldier shot her to death.
North Korea then refused to cooperate with South Korea’s requests to investigate. South Korea suspended visits to the Kumgang resort (which is bankrolled by South Korean money, and operates inside North Korea as a cordoned-off source of hard cash for Kim’s regime). North Korea has denounced this is an “intolerable insult” (have you ever noticed that the most despotic systems are also the most chronically offended?), and is demanding an apology from South Korea.
Meanwhile, at the Six-Party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, there’s just been another round of “diplomacy,” involving discussion about arranging further discussion to talk about discussing details of a still-to-be-fully-discussed and narrowly-defined “verification” setup for North Korea’s nuclear program, or at least the parts of it already highly visible. The “progress” for the U.S. and allies is strictly on paper. Forget such absolutely germane questions as whether any inspectors who ultimately go to work in North Korea will be allowed to look where they choose. The question is whether they’ll even be able to take a walk on the beach without getting shot.
Chalk it up to sheer accident. But anatomical obscenities to the side, Jesse Jackson did get one thing right – or at least partially right — when he muttered into that open microphone that Obama “is talking down to black people.” What Jackson left out is that Obama talks down to white people too. And to Hispanics, and to people of Asian ancestry, and if there’s anyone reading this of Eskimo descent, he’s talking down to you, too. Actually, in talking down to people, Obama does not discriminate. He talks down to Americans.
The problem with Obama goes way beyond the condescension he has displayed in such telling moments as the clinging-to-guns-and-religion comment, the prevarications over Rev. Wright, the ease with which he threw his own grandmother under the wheels as a “typical white woman,” or the way he expects us to faithfully follow his loop-the-loops on foreign policy. Clearly it’s not what Jackson had in mind, but the basic problem here is the “talking down” that goes on when any politician — black, white, Obama, Hillary, you-name-it — aims to change this country into an ever more collectivized state. In his campaign speeches, his comments, his asides, Obama is promising an America in which the main way to move up will not be individual enterprise, not “Yes, I will” – but to have the government (at someone else’s expense) hoist you up the ladder, with Obama looking down from the top, intoning “Yes we can.”
If that’s supposed to be a formula for hope, Obama is talking down to all of us. This stuff has a shelf life that will expire shortly after the inauguration. It’s been tried before, at great cost. Whatever the fine intentions, the brunt falls heaviest on those least privileged, least connected and least adept in gaming the system. The way the world really works is: The bigger the government’s say over who gets what, the more the dictate becomes not “Yes we can,” but “No, you can’t.”
Iran as part of its “Great Prophet” war games test fires missiles, flaunting this on TV, bragging up a range that can hit Israel.
What to do? Obama calls for “aggressive diplomacy” instead of “farming out the diplomatic activity to the Europeans” –by which he seems to mean replacing European carrots with American apple pie. McCain calls for “Working with our European and regional allies” — which sounds like adding peas to the carrots.
And they’re both behind the times. The Condi Rice State Department has already developed a framework for threat-managing such unfortunate developments, in which diplomacy of every variety is on offer — unilateral, multilateral, a dazzling poker game of peas, carrots, plutonium, uranium, cash and pie-in-the-sky. North Korea is the model. Working from that template, here’s what comes next:
Assorted powers convene yet again to exert multilateral pressure, with maybe a few futile UN resolutions thrown in. Much talk. Special envoy Chris Hill, or his moral equivalent, is dispatched to conduct aggressive diplomacy. Time goes by.
Iran tests a nuclear bomb (which is referred to as a “device’).
More talk. A nuclear disarmament deal is announced. Iran immediately demands additional concessions, not mentioned in the public deal. Chris Hill, or his backup copy, hops to. Millions in frozen funds are released back to the Tehran regime, preferably with the help of at least three central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve. New deadlines are announced for Iran to declare and give up its nuclear program.
Iran ignores the deadlines. Iranian nuclear experts are discovered to have been collaborating with another terrorist-sponsoring state on the near-complete construction of a secret reactor with no apparent purpose but to produce plutonium for nuclear bombs. But that’s OK because it gets quietly blown up by an Israeli air strike, which the U.S. administration then keeps secret for months, lest such realities make a big enough splash in the news to interfere with the rapport at the negotiating table.
Finally, many months past various deadlines, Iran delivers an incomplete, narrowly defined nuclear declaration, the documents themselves dusted with enriched uranium. The White House promptly announces that Iran is being removed from the list of terrorist-sponsoring states. With great fanfare, Iran responds with the televised demolition of a large hunk of concrete appended to one obsolete portion of its sprawling nuclear program. U.S. taxpayers bankroll the demolition, and America swings into action to ship hundreds of millions worth of aid to the government of Iran, filtering some of it through the same UN that ran the Oil-for-Food and Cash-for-Kim programs.
It is a performance dazzling in its way, a circus act both unilateral and multilateral, soft and agressive, punctuated with announcements of progress and warnings that above all, there must be no serious threat of military action against Iran — lest it derail the diplomacy.
… Of course, if you tally it all up, Iran’s government under this scenario (like North Korea’s today) would still be in possession of all nuclear bomb ingredients, known or unknown, declared or undeclared, stockpiled at the beginning, manufactured since, or contracted out for supply by third parties. And Tehran’s mullahs and Revolutionary Guards would have greater access to their global nuclear supply and proliferation networks, as well as pockets stuffed with pay-offs from America (and Europe). Not least, they would have the distinct pleasure of strutting this successful shakedown on the world stage, both as warning to their own people not to get uppity over domestic repression, and as prelude to the next round of nuclear extortion — or worse.
What would America get? A big stack of paper, some of it contaminated with uranium, providing an incomplete guide to nuclear weapons material over which the U.S. has no control; a stack of bills for U.S. taxpayers; video clips of a large hunk of concrete being blown up. And quite likely a queue of despotic governments looking to sign up for this kind of deal.
That’s how it works right now. Which is pretty strange. Just as things have been looking up in Iraq, the administration on other fronts has been abandoning the principles of Iraq, the Model. Instead, American foreign policy now pivots around such stuff as North Korea, the Model. Keep yer lead-lined raincoats handy.
Meeting in Japan, the leaders of the G-7 industrial powers (plus Russia, with which President Clinton made it the G-8) are stymied over how to punish Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who is this month’s election-stealing nation-ruining violence-cultivating tyrant-in-the-news. Our leaders are bogged down in the usual default mode of urging UN sanctions, while the tyrant-of-the-month’s pals — in this case, the seven African rulers on hand to shake down the developed world for yet more aid – say no.
While they’re all having that fascinating off-the-shelf discussion, here’s one way the leaders of the democratic world could at least begin punishing Mugabe, with zero harm to anyone but Mugabe and his cronies. Launch a public campaign to kick Zimbabwe off the 36-member governing boards of two of the UN’s biggest aid agencies: UNICEF and the World Food Program. What Mugabe’s regime is doing with these seats in the first place is an intriguing question. Kicking him off would be a two-fer. It would take away some of the perks he still enjoys on the UN stage, and it would be at least one small step toward cleaning up the UN. If the Bush administration won’t raise the issue, Obama, McCain, whaddaya say?
At the G-8 meeting now underway in Japan, the talk is all about targets. Double aid to Africa. Funnel resources as directed under the UN’s 8 millennium development goals, to be met by the year 2015. Halve carbon emissions by the year 2050.
No wonder so many people are struggling. This isn’t how poor people get rich. This is how for much of the 20th century the Soviet Union and its satellites stayed poor. Back then, the labels were different. Moscow wasn’t slick enough to have millennium development goals. The politburo had Goskomstat issuing five year plans, setting productions targets, calculating inputs and rationing outputs — which resulted in an impoverished and oppressed population waiting in long lines for such luxuries as toilet paper. In the West, it was then the fashion in professional do-good circles to attack under the label of “capitalism” the vibrant all-American productivity now widely reviled under the proxy label of ”carbon emissions.”
Real wealth comes from setting up fair rules of the game, and leaving people free to choose. If the G-8 countries want to work on that, we’re on our way to a better world for all. But on the current course, maybe we should just rename the G-8 the Grand Rationing Committee, and batten down for a shabbier world, in which amid all the doubling and halving and UN millennium goals, the only clear beneficiaries are the planners themselves.
No joke. In a terrific column on the seductive delusions of appeasement, Barry Rubin of Israel’s Gloria Center highlights the headline above, from an article published Dec. 21, 1924, in the New York Times. As Rubin notes, it sounds like satire. In fact, it sounds so much like satire that I double-checked in the Times archives. (Subscription only, but here it is). The Times described the paroled Hitler as “a much sadder and wiser man” expected to “retire to private life and return to Austria, the country of his birth.”
Rubin (author of a new book on “The Truth About Syria“) points out that the many concessions of today’s prevailing Western diplomacy reflect much the same mindset, that “the leaders of Hamas, Hizballah, Syria, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhoods, al-Qaida, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Sudan, etc., will no doubt be tamed, abandon public life, and go back to their homes.”
Nor has the Times changed its tune. Rubin quotes from a June 30th NYT editorial: “Few countries can afford the luxury of limiting their diplomacy to friendly countries and peace-loving parties.” (Note, just in case you missed it, Condi’s many carrots for Kim Jong Il reportedly include $2.5 million for the recent Potemkin show of blowing up the cooling tower at the aging Yongbyon reactor).
Were hypocrisy an Olympic sport, UNICEF would qualify for the top ranks of the UN’s star-studded team. Recently, UNICEF cut all ties to an Israeli businessman, Lev Leviev, because of what Reuters described as his “suspected involvement” in building settlements on the West Bank. Now the Gulf News reports that following UNICEF’s blacklisting of Leviev, the Arab League is considering going beyond its usual bigotry in boycotting all direct business with Israel, and may blacklist all Leviev’s companies, as well as his agent in the United Arab Emirates.
Why did UNICEF get into this game? According to Reuters, UNICEF spokesman Chris de Bono explained that blackisting Leviev is supposed to be all about limiting UNICEF’s partners and donors to folks who are “as non-controversial as possible.”
Oh really? That’s fascinating, coming from UNICEF, where the 36-member executive board — which is its governing body — currently includes the regimes of Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe.
These despotisms (let’s say it again — UNICEF board members Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe) are all in flagrant violation of a whole array of the UN’s own resolutions, on matters as grave as nuclear proliferation and obscene violations of basic human rights. Their collective activities in very recent times have included slaughtering peaceful dissidents, torturing and jailing political opponents, plundering their own countries, blocking and manipulating UN emergency relief efforts, rigging elections, training and supporting terrorists and engaging in the illicit pursuit of nuclear bombs — accompanied by gloating threats to obliterate a nearby state.
Apparently — since all three are still listed as members of the board — UNICEF does not regard the governments of Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe as controversial. Either that, or UNICEF has two different standards: One that entails the blacklisting of Israeli would-be supporters that UNICEF has decided are not “as non-controversial as possible”; and another that provides seats on UNICEF’s governing board for some of the world’s nastiest tyrannies. That leaves us with two questions. Why on earth would Lev Leviev, or anyone else in the democratic world, want to support UNICEF at all? And who on the UNICEF governing board is busy deciding what is controversial, and what is not?
