The united nations debate?

[Tortington]

explain please.

as far as i can tell its a made up quango of people who cannot be elected with the 5 permanent members being the richest countries who are relly serving their own countries needs ( their own pockets prolly) and therefore allow things like massive arms trades to take place.

was talking to political degree dh today - who agreed with what i said then said - but they do good things too, there is always going to be a "club" at the 'top' and this one does good things as well as self serving interest things.

he said it used to be the legue of nations which was the "club" and they did fuck all.

so thought i would ask the most elequant debters here about it.

dont know wht i am asking though.

i think that its funny how the quango known as the UN diesnt seem to get much bad press, its not depicted that way certainly. you see the aid vehicles in ome worn torn country or peacekeeping troups and think that UN=force for good. but is it - and seeing as there will always be a club at the top - is the way it is currently structured the best way to ensure britain doesn't suffer verses the rest of the world suffering?

how does the UN affect our country? what political actions does it force countries to take?

oy vey - will bump this tomorrow cos it will die a terrible death by then

would anyone with slight political knowledge like to put their POV?

will bump shamelessly

It doesnt get a bad press in the UK because it goes along with the US agenda by and large, and because its part of the myth of government not being totally self-seeking, that the british establishment wants us to believe in.

in fact, the UN is just a gravy train for a bunch of diplomats, it doesnt reflect truth or justice, just the interests of whichever country won the diplomatic wrangling.

but the press are not beholdandt to the us agenda - in fact when i spoke to my dh about it the naturally progessed ontot he press - and i said "why didnt the UN intervene in the yugoslavian war?"

he said something about it having nothing that we need or that they could make money from and major american clout is held by jews who didnt care either way who dies - unlike isreal palastine.

he said change would only be affected by public opinion - which is when i had a revelation about the BBC

the wider population would only ever know about these attrocities if they are reported ont he news - and this is how with outrage and outcry governments will intervene (always too late) but only becuase of the reporting.

now i always understood the power of the media and the danger of it being held by one rupert but never really dawned on me ow much it could affect world event and intervention

i always thought that the middle classes were all fo keeping the BBC becuase they didnt want macdonaldesq advertising crushing out and dictating programming by viewwers or listeners - therefore getting more pulp like weastenders and less high drama and documentaries and quirky little stuff like the archers.

however the reall danger is you would get one christian media mogul, or one jewish one or one moslim one beaming their version of events accross the world.

you get one major contributor to the republicanor democratic, labout or tory parties and slanting political and social commentary thus.

in that light i am mire than happy to pay my tv license.

although i suspect it is more complicated - i am a simp[le girl.

do fill me in

I think the UN is simply a club of all the recognised states in the world and reflects the fact that some states are more equal than others. So what the USA says, goes.

Which is why the UN isn't placing sanctions on Israel for building an apartheid wall and ignoring UN resolutions, but is threatening Iran.

If most states are against something but 5 are for it, if those 5 happen to be USA UK Israel, Russia and Italy (just picking 5 who matter at random) then it will probably happen. If the UN started to work the way it was envisaged, and gave a voice to the representatives of the majority of the people in the world, it would simply be disbanded, because the Great Powers (or the International Community as they now like to call themselves) would find it inconvenient.

Having said that, the UN does do some useful stuff with things like UNESCO, UNICEF etc. But I'm not too clued up on all that.

Trouble is, you have to seperate out the UN Gnereal Assmebly (which is mostly a talking shop in New York), the UN Security Council (which has the real clout, and where the US, China, Russia, France or the UK can veto everything and anything - hence no sactions on Israel, and little else done about Iran), and the various UN bodies based in Geneva - UNICEF, World health organisation, UNAIDS, UNESCO, etc.

The real stuff gets done by the Geneva based bodies that fucntion like giant charities but are funded by world governments. Some do more good than others (UNHCR is very effective with refugees, WHO does produce some great health education resources and gets a lot of major porjects going without ahving much money to spend, but is often less effectivethan it ought to be).

Does the UN system do any good? personally, I'd rather stick everyone in a room to have an argy bargy that does little or ntohign than have them sending gunboats and bombers to sort out their differences. But maybe I am just naive

custardo's DH has a vlaid point, there always have been many clubs like NATO, IMF, World Bank,the G8, etc. The World Health Organisation does incredible amounts of good and existed before the UN, even though the sleezebags in New York keep trying to screw with it. Although the bigest threat to global health is easily America evangelical christians.

Caligua has a point, but bizarrely the USA is mostly in the right in it's dealing with the UN, but loses.

The US wants to cut it's corruption and use the UN to put pressure on defective regimes. Of course when it doesn't get the "right" answer it takes it's ball away.
The UN could be a lot better, but it's defects are mostly caused by it's multinational structure.
Most senior bods are there because they know the right people in their home state, and it's a lucrative self important role.

Whatever you think of GW Bush, he is a genuis of the utmost personal integrity when you compare his regime with that of the current secretary-general Annan. If one of Bush's kids was employed in a senior job, and caught in possession of millions of dollars that was supposed to be used for medical & food aid, how long could he remain in office ?

There is nothing whatsoever to stop the UN deciding to take out the evil regime in Zimbabwe.
None of the veto powers will stop it, and France & the UK could lend a hand. It's not America stopping this, indeed they mostly don't even know it exists. China has no historical baggage in this region, and has the appropriate equipment as does Russia, Sweden et al.
Would take a few weeks.
Doesn't happen.
It's easy (and often correct) to say that America only acts on crap countries when there's oil involved, but it has less than 10% of the world's military power. Lots of bad things could be stopped, but aren't because countries like Germany and Japan won't do anything about the many bad things they could stop.

Not sure that Amercian Evagelcial Christian are the biggest threat to world health - it's a common and easy aunt sally to sya tht they are. Actually, apaprt form a few loud mouth nutter, most of the mroe impressive developemtns in lcoal health have been at the behest of evangelical and Catholic groups - often wiht abcking from big Americn chruches. Poeple jsut get uptght about the whole AIDS prevention thing, where a lot of ideology and poor evidence based practice (on both sides of the deabte) win out over the stuff that actually works - a fair bit of which is also being doen by chruches (and whatever you hear from the Vatican or US big name evangleical hot heads, most of what happens on the ground in Africa is very different, and remarkably effective).

A bigger threat to world health is the constant bcikering between different vested interests - hence the crippling of the World health organisation and UNIADS by not jsut hte US Govbernment, but pretty much every rich governement.

PS - sorry for the appalling typos in that last post.

quick stop home to cook tea before am off for another meeting and am glad this finally got some results - however i am going to have to read each post twice to understand it - and some organisation i haven't even heard of so will be asking questions later!

It's easy to throw things at Evangelicals because they do such bad things. Aside from their frankly evil views on AIDS, there is also their sabotage of stem cells and other therapies.
Also all contraception advice gets trashed by even the mention of abortion as an option.
Yes, like the Catholic groups they do good work but their views on condoms result in so many deaths that we can now track the impact upon total human evolution. Yet more reason for them to despise science.

Charities help tens of thousands, that is a good thing, but AIDS et al do for millions. Charities, even the big ones simply don't work on that scale.
That's why they emphasise the good local projects, they just ain't got the muscle to take on big stuff. That of itself doesn't make them bad people, but it's a scale thing. Epidemics aren't local by their very nature, and messing up the already awful response to AIDS et al is a tragedy that dwarfs setting up clinics.

The USA is not the only government guilty of pandering to superstitious lobby groups, but it's power to screw things up.

You're right that bickering between interest groups does great harm. No one in the west can bring themselves to do anything to Mbeki in S.Africa, personally responsible for at least hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths because he believes that AIDS is a myth created by westrrn drug companies.
One thing the non-American religious groups are trying to do is attack the ghastly farm subsidies and trade barriers in the rich world. In terms of death and misery the EU common agricultural policy makes the holocaust look small.
But they have failed utterly to make even the slightest impact. Europeans, including the Brits are quite happy to see black kids starving as long as their farmers get to buy ne Range Rovers.

A bigger threat to world health is the constant bcikering between different vested interests - hence the crippling of the World health organisation and UNIADS by not jsut hte US Govbernment, but pretty much every rich governement.

so what would be the modle - a realistic one considering the world and the politics today. my dh said that the un is probably the best we're ever going to get becuase at least it does some good stuff.

how should it be structured? could it be structured in such a way that you personally dont suffer - job cut, interest rates rising etc whilst at the same time it being more effective ?

on the other hand where do "we" step in? who elected america and britain as the worlds police?

should we just leave them all to it unless the planet is going to be blown away - or should we step in everytime there are massacres - i mean who are we to dictate to a country how it must be run and what is right or not

am interested in what structure you would have in this elitist "club" which will always be at the top.

Britain & America (and to an extent France) elected themselves. No one else is willing to do the dirty work.
You raise the point of massacres, and my view is that many countries are not fit to run themselves.

The problem is that old sacred cow of "sovereignty".

It's a multi layered problem. To what extent should the people in a country be held to account for the nation's actions as a whole ?

Saddam Hussein was almost unique amongst the crap end of leaders in that he killed people himself. Even then, as in most countries the actual murder, rape, theft, torture etc is done by "ordinary" citizens.
We have data points from Japan & Germany where horrible civillian casualties actually fixed defective cultures. In Argentina the murderous military regime was humilliated into collapse when it was "defeated by a woman", ie Thatcher. Very quickly fell apart, and Argentina is now most of the way to being a civilised country. But we had to kill a few thousand to do that as well.
A major factor in the collapse of the truly awful Soviet Union was it's defeat at the hand of Afghans.
There are more examples of this pattern, but who is up for taking out the government district in Zimbabwe ?
Say 1-2000 deaths, 80% chance of taking out all the worst offenders.

Not many I suspect.

But sanctions may look good to Guardian readers and the more excitable members of the US Congress, but they usually strengthen the regime.
So they make for good media exposure for leaders and/or the UN, but achieve little.

Courts after they did it are just silly.
As we're seeing with Serbia, it can easily take so long to actually convict anyone that they die before conviction. Most leaders are older men so that is to be expected, and that assumes you can catch them.

Even then, the "charges" always look a bit dodgy.
Saddam is charged with ordering the death of people who tried to kill him.
In most countries an attack on the head of state would be counted as treason, and since poeple were killed in the attack, that would be murder.
Thus Saddam is being tried for "crimes" that if they happened in America would be entirely legal.

so dc how should it be structured - have we got kinda the best we could considering the world and the needs of each countries people?

The UN grants privileges, but not obligations.

For instance when Iraq attacked Kuwait this was a clear violation of the UN charter and international "law". Unlike the current Iraq war, Iraq could make no claim to be under threat, and never did so.

Various countries ganged up on Iraq, with the USA taking the lead because it had the most projectable power.
But...
Most nations who could help, chose not to. China & Russia for instance.
So first step is to make UN membership and veto power dependant upon actually doing things.
China is a veto power yet never ever does anything to help anyone. Thus the deal has to be that veto powers have to put agreed resources at the disposal of the UN. This could be a combination of troops, emergency equipment and personnel, and transport. Although lacking the "human interest" that drives all BBC reporting the USA's power in the world comes from it's huge transport and logistics infrastructure, not nukes or stealh bombers.
Thus I feel that veto membership should be bought, and would allow coalitions of smaller countries to buy in by providing the necessary level of resource.
Each veto state would have a portfolio of "missions". A clear defect in the current setup is that everyone has input in both operational decisions and staffing leading to mismanagement and corrpution.
Thus (for instance) a Scandanavian coalition might take on African health.
Poor countries need not be excluded fromn this process. For instnace UN peackeepers are reimbursed at a standard rate, meaning that those from rich countires run at a loss, and poor countires like Pakistan actually make useful money from it. There is no reason why a poor country cannot be an "outsourcer" for helping others.

Pakistani peacekeepers in Northern Ireland would not be in any way partisan for instance.

At present much so-called aid is in fact a rich country foring a poor one to buy things from a supplier in the donor country. Opening this up to market forces would deliver better solutions.

But we also need sticks, as well as carrots.
We change "sovereignty" from a right to privilege.
Any country that abjectly fails to run itself properly loses that right.

but you can't tell china what to do and what not to do. its too big - if they dont want to help - they dont have to help - even if you changed the rules - in the interest of other countries economies and of course theres the nuclear thing - adn the fact that it has a huge population - we have to keep them on board.

you coudlnt take powers off them.

or even restructure them in the way you described becuse they would just say " ahh fuck it" and go off and nuke tibet

custy if you are really interested in this read \link{http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/\In Larger Freedom} by Kofi Annan. It is basically his proposals for reform. Concerning the issue of how the international community can/should react when a state commits gross violations against its own people look at \link{http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/\the Responsibility to Protect project}

And to DominiConnor - you can't conclude that the International Criminal Court on Yugoslavia is "silly" because it didn't convict Milosevic. the court has developed fantastic jurisprudence on, for example, the law of the conduct of hostilities, violence against women and genocide. It has convicted many serious criminals, it has given over 3000 witnesses the chance to testify. It has played an important role in establishing the International Criminal Court, which in turn has provoked many countries to adopt legislation to ensure war criminals are tried.

i would rather someone talk to me about their feelings of how it is run - i'm not passionate - just curious after watching lord of war the other night.

i know theres nothing i can do - its not elected so i cant even show my feelings through voting.

i find those articles dry.

i think though judging by the response here that so do many other people - the UN seems to be "uninteresting" its certainly how i felt.

the more politically concious knew about the quango-esq set up and seem - very midly outraged - becuase there is nothing to do about it.

and when i ask about what we would put in its place considering that there will be always a club of the ruchest and most powerful in it for their own greed and power - it seems hard to get answers - well becuase its very complicated for the ordinary joe to get their head round

some people want to show how brainy they are instead of answering the questions i have.

if it was so fkin interesting politics would not have the eternal debate of the dissaffected uninterested voters.

aAND THATS when we can affect change - where we have a democratic right, one fought for, blood shed for.

so i suppose trying to gather any groundswell of opinion either way on something you absolutley cannot affect change on - is vaguely around giving out food parcels to starving people in africa - is around peacekeeping in war zones - well who gives a shit sound a bit complicated, not my cup of tea is what most people try to say

yet the decisions here affect our economy - the dick shakes and secret wanks under the table determine business and trade between countries.
this means jobs
affecting the economy
or lack of jobs
affecting the economy
so it does affect you directly yet there is little opinion on it.

i find that facinating

Custardo is right one cannot tell China what to do, but one can take away privileges for not behaving well.

I'm not sure "hat" is being ironic about Milosovic ?
developing "fantastic" new jurisprudence may be fun but is not going to deter people is it ?
It's not even really new stuff.
The Nazis were dealt with much more quickly, and that was a genuinely new situation. Previously the losers were simply executed or locked up at the whim of the winner.
Actually I don't blame the judges, much. I blame the presecutors. The senrio Nazis not only did big bad things, they did many bad things, and were tried for a small number of them.
The prosecutors were pandering to the idea that justice would not be done unless they tried every last damn thing he is claimed to have done, above littering the public highway.

Milosovic was actually charged with more crimes than all the Nazis at the Nuremberg trial put together.
This kept lots of busybodies busy and mae lots of people feel self imnportant but sent out the message that if you stall long enough, you get to die in your bed.

no, not being ironic. ICTY has made enormous strides in terms of developing the law. and has significant developments from Nuremberg but too late to elaborate now