Why the UN is such a failure

At the Washington Examiner, Henry Miller explains why the UN is such a failure.

...The U.S. has long been a hugely disproportionate funder of U.N. activities — our mandatory assessment and voluntary contributions total some $8 billion — but the era of America as the U.N.’s sugar-daddy is waning. Last year, State Department staffers were instructed to find significant cuts in U.S. funding for U.N. programs (above the mandatory assessment) — the first signal of long-overdue belt-tightening.

Why are incompetence and profligacy rife within the sprawling organization? In several respects, it’s in the U.N.’s DNA.

First, the U.N. is essentially a monopoly. Inefficiency and incompetence are not punished by "consumers" of their products or services spurning the U.N. and patronizing a competitor. On the contrary, it is not uncommon in these kinds of bureaucracies for failure to be rewarded with additional resources. Unlike in business, if a program isn’t working, government bureaucrats clamor to make it bigger.

Second, U.N. officials are rewarded for making the bureaucratic machinery run — that is, for producing reports, guidelines, white papers and agreements, and for holding meetings — whether or not they are of high quality or make any sense at all. And they often don’t; the bureaucrats often sacrifice veracity for consensus — sort of like letting eight-year-olds vote on whether a whale is a fish or a mammal.

Third, there's no accountability — no U.S. Government Accountability Office, House of Lords Select Committee or parliamentary oversight, and no electorate to kick the U.N. reprobates out when they act contrary to the public interest. It's hardly surprising, therefore, that we see egregious examples of arrogance and corruption, let alone day-to-day featherbedding, laziness, and incompetence in the thousands of individual U.N. programs and projects.

Fourth, in the absence of accountability, U.N. officials feel little need for transparency; its public relations offices simply spin, spin, spin the anti-technology, anti-capitalist party line, which often fails to take into consideration that scientific progress and modernity give rise to greater prosperity and longevity.

Fifth, the pool of possible candidates for U.N. leadership positions is not a promising one. The organization is no meritocracy: The country or region of origin of a candidate seems to be more important than his credentials and qualifications. Also, if you were a head of state or government minister, would you choose to lose your best people to the U.N.? Wouldn’t you prefer to keep them close, to make you look good, and to benefit your country? It’s hardly surprising that the U.N. ends up with the least competent and most disaffected, dysfunctional, and dishonest officials.

Read more here.

Nikki Haley is one of Trump's best appointments!

The UN Security Council was convened to discuss President Trump's announcement that America would move its embassy to Israel's capital, Jerusalem. Nikki Haley delivered a speech explaining how the US has worked to achieve peace and how the UN has unfairly attacked Israel!

"The UN, as now configured,increasingly compels us to a cataclysm"

Claudia Rosett is my favorite journalist who covers the UN beat. She writes at PJ Media,

This week brings fresh reports that the Trump White House wants to slash funding to the United Nations, possibly by as much as 50%. That would be a wise move, and if that's what actually happens, it would be a good start and a welcome signal -- the first from an American president in many years -- that it is time for the UN to stop treating Washington as a moronic sugar-daddy. It is way past time for the UN (and Washington itself) to stop treating U.S. tax dollars as a multi-billion-dollar annual entitlement for the bigots and thug governments that so amply populate Turtle Bay. It is time for the U.S. to stop shelling out roughly $10 billion per year for the benefit of a UN in which, for instance, the member states have just elected -- I'm not kidding -- the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, as head of the largest voting caucus at the UN assemblies in Vienna.

...My argument is, if the UN is all we've got, then it is way past time to come up with something else.

And while it happens fairly often that columnists here and there (myself included) will call for defunding the UN, replacing the UN, supplanting the UN, and so forth, there is very little in the public domain that actually explores, in serious ways, in detail, with the benefit of real expertise, exactly how America might divorce itself from the UN, and avail itself of arrangements more appropriate to the 21st century.

...The UN is swift to tout its own achievements, real or imagined. But there is plenty in the record to suggest that the more we understand about the real workings of the U.N., the stronger the case for consigning it to the heap of failed collectivist experiments of the 20th century and for designing better alternatives. Either this task gets done in the not-so-distant future because men of vision and good will put their minds to finding ways to do it. Or it waits upon the aftermath of some cataclysm, toward which the U.N., as now configured, increasingly impels us.

Read more here.

Cutting funding to UN programs

Here's one I like. President Trump has told T Rex to cut more than 50% of US funding to United Nations programs!

"But, outside of the UN, there is some good news!"

Thanks to Bookworm, who provides this link to the delightful Nikki Haley in her first UN press conference.

Do go to Bookworm's site where she brilliantly exposes a Leftist hiding behind Anne Frank's skirts.

Nikki Haley arrives at the UN: "For those who do not have our backs, we're taking names!"

The New York Times reports,

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, issued a stark warning on Friday to allies and rivals abroad, saying in her first remarks at the headquarters of the world body that the Trump administration would hold to account those who do not back the United States.

“You’re going to see a change in the way we do business,” Ms. Haley said. “Our goal with the administration is to show value at the U.N., and the way we’ll show value is to show our strength, show our voice, have the backs of our allies and make sure our allies have our back as well.”

“For those who don’t have our back,” she added, “we’re taking names; we will make points to respond to that accordingly.”

Read more here.

I can't wait to see what Trump does to the UN!

Alex Newman reports at The New American,

Establishment globalists were right to be concerned about the fate of their schemes. After a fast-paced first week of putting “America First” by targeting pseudo-“free trade” regimes and rogue regulatory agencies, President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to take on the United Nations. Its swarms of agencies, programs, bureaucracies, conventions, and associated schemes are also in the crosshairs. According to a January 25 report in the anti-Trump New York Times, which claimed to have seen a set of draft orders being prepared by the administration, Trump plans to drastically reduce the U.S. government's role at the UN and other international organizations. He is also planning a review of sovereignty-stealing UN treaties, with a view toward restoring self-government in various policy areas and saving U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars. Globalists everywhere are in a panic.

Read more here.

What can we do with a vacant UN building?

At Theo Spark's blog, Rico writes,

There were many who do not understand that the UN (aka Useless Nitwits) is UNinvolved in doing anything good or beneficial for the civilized world. It is a country club for the world's despots and dictators, funded by US tax dollars.
- Most people were "clueless" even when the Sudan (where genocide is rampant and slavery is legal) had chairmanship of the UN's Human Rights Council.

Maybe 2017 will wake a few people up?

Meet the UN's Human Rights Council for 2017.
- Who better to recognize violations of human rights than some of the planet's worst violators of human rights, like Saudi Arabia - celebrating it's most executions by beheading since 1995's 192; Venezuela; Cuba; ....well you get the picture by now without further explanation).?

A full 76% of the UN's General Assembly voted for Saudi Arabia, for example (yes, they 'won' the 'popular vote' Hillary).
- Still need reasons for the US to "defUNd" and then "EXIT" the UN?

That UN building would make wonderful condo's for all the "homeless" that the MSM hasn't spoken one word about for the last eight years (but WILL be carping about incessantly now that Trump is President).
- I personally think it should be as refitted as decent 'free' housing for America's homeless veterans.....

Obama's historical ignorance

Jeb Babbin writes at the American Spectator,

President Obama’s enmity toward Israel, though often denied, has been obvious since his inauguration. Through many meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his attempt to force a false peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and his nuclear weapons deal with Iran, Obama has made it clear to anyone who wanted to see that his hatred of Israel coincided with his intention to diminish our national security as well as that of the Jewish state.

Obama is not just pro-Palestinian, he is anti-Israel. Set aside the issue of whether he and Kerry are anti-Semitic. They probably are. More importantly, to the narcissistic Obama, opposition to Israel and Netanyahu is a very personal fight.

Obama has always seen his presidency as a vehicle for the accommodation of Islamic nations. This is the president who ordered his director of NASA to make his primary mission an outreach to the Islamic world, rather than other planets. In his June 2009 speech in Cairo, Obama told the Islamic world that part of the job of America’s president is to fight against negative stereotypes of Muslims. There was no mention of the need to fight against Islamic nations’ aggression against our allies.

Obama’s approach was historically ignorant. Three times since 2000, Israeli prime ministers have offered land for peace and been rebuffed. Ehud Barak offered up East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank in a plan designed by Bill Clinton, but Yassir Arafat, then Palestinian “president,” walked out of the talks. In 2005, Ariel Sharon withdrew all Israelis from the Gaza Strip and pulled Israel back across the pre-1967 borders. The Palestinians answered by raining missiles on Israel from Gaza. In 2008, Ehud Olmert offered essentially 100 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and a divided Jerusalem to be the capital of both the still non-existent nation of Palestine and Israel. Mahmoud Abbas took the offer to study it and left never returned to the negotiations.

...In March 2015, Netanyahu did something Obama never forgave. He addressed a joint session of Congress, at then-Speaker John Boehner’s invitation, forcefully warning against the Iran nuclear deal. Obama made that deal later in the year. As President-elect Trump has said many times, it was an awful deal. And, as this column has detailed many times, it is a deal that drastically diminishes America’s national security.

Instead of properly submitting the Iran deal to the Senate for ratification (as every preceding nuclear deal had been), Obama took it to the UN, obtaining a Security Council resolution blessing it. But it remains unratified, so Trump can void it any time he wishes.

...Some in Congress have advocated diminishing our funding of the UN which accounts for at least 22 percent of its annual revenue. Trump should demand that Congress drastically reduce our payments to the UN. We await his decision to press Congress to do so. We’ll see if he does. Part of history’s judgment of his presidency will be rendered on it.

It’s time to walk Reagan’s path again and not let the anti-American, anti-Israel United Nations decide our policies.

Was this Obama’s last betrayal of our national security interests? There are still 25 days left. What more damage will he do?

Read more here.

"The United Nations is a failed experiment." We need to take our $3 billion and get out.

Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page Magazine,

The United States pays 22% of the total UN budget. What we get for our $3 billion a year is a corrupt organization whose dysfunctional and hostile agencies are united in opposing us around the world.

The United Nations does only two things consistently and effectively: waste money and bash Israel. Sometimes it manages to do both at the same time.

...We are not making the world a better place by being members of this anti-American organization which vacillates between being evil and useless.

...Like the League of Nations, the United Nations is a failed experiment. The only difference is that, despite decades of wars, genocides and terror, we still haven’t pulled the plug.

President Trump will have the opportunity to pull out of the UN and drain the swamp in Turtle Bay.

Like the League of Nations, the United Nations is a failed experiment. The only difference is that, despite decades of wars, genocides and terror, we still haven’t pulled the plug.

President Trump will have the opportunity to pull out of the UN and drain the swamp in Turtle Bay.tion
Read many more examples od UN corruption, evil, and incompetence here.

Extending Obama's legacy of failure and appeasement.

The editors of National Review conclude,

The world will soon move on from Barack Obama, but he’s doing his best to extend his legacy of failure and appeasement. The Palestinians deserved a rebuke. Instead, they received a gift. Our closest Middle Eastern ally will pay the price.

Read more here

More on Obama's disgraceful abstention on the UN anti-Israel vote

Ann Althouse links toCharles Krauthammer, who writes in the Washington Post,

To give you an idea of how appalling this resolution is, it declares that any Jew who lives in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, the Jewish quarter, inhabited for 1,000 years, is illegal, breaking international law, essentially an outlaw, can be hauled into the international criminal court and international courts in Europe, which is one of the consequences. The Jewish quarter has been populated by Jews for 1,000 years. In the war of Independence in 1948, the Arabs invaded Israel to wipe it out. They did not succeed, but the Arab Legion succeeded in conquering the Jewish quarter. They expelled all the Jews. They destroyed all the synagogues and all the homes. For 19 years, no Jew could go there. The Israelis got it back in the Six-Day War. Now it’s declared that this is not Jewish territory. Remember, it’s called 'the Jewish quarter,' but it belongs to other people. And any Jew who lives there is an outlaw. That’s exactly what we supported. The resolution is explicit in saying settlements in the occupied territories and in east Jerusalem."

In 2012, running for re-election, Obama spoke at the meeting of AIPAC, the big Jewish lobby. He said, “Is there any doubt that I have Israel’s back?” That’s why he didn’t want do it while he was in office. That’s why he didn’t want to do it in 2016 so it would injure Hillary and show to particularly American Jews, who tend to be Democratic, that it was all a farce. He does it on the way out, and that’s part of why it’s so disgraceful. He didn’t even — he hid it until there would be no consequence. Now he is out the door and the damage is done for years. That resolution cannot be undone.
ADDED: From the Washington Post editors: "The Obama administration fires a dangerous parting shot." The NYT has no editorial response yet.

AND: Outside of the opinion pages, the NYT does have a news article, "Obama, Trump and the Turf War That Has Come to Define the Transition." that begins:
President-elect Donald J. Trump and President Obama have been unfailingly polite toward each other since the election. But with Mr. Trump staking out starkly different positions from Mr. Obama on Israel and other sensitive issues, and the president acting aggressively to protect his legacy, the two have become leaders of what amounts to dueling administrations.

The split widened on Friday when the Obama administration abstained from a United Nations Security Council vote that condemned Israel for Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and allowed the resolution to pass. A day earlier, Mr. Trump had publicly demanded that Mr. Obama veto the measure, even intervening with Egypt at the request of Israel to pressure the administration to shelve the effort....

It was the latest in a rapid-fire series of Twitter posts and public statements over the last week in which Mr. Trump has weighed in on Israel, terrorism and nuclear proliferation — contradicting Mr. Obama and flouting the notion that the country can have only one president at a time....

Obama colludes behind the scenes at the UN

Prime Minister Netanyahu's office issued this statement on the UN vote:

“Israel rejects this shameful anti-Israel resolution at the UN and will not abide by its terms. At a time when the Security Council does nothing to stop the slaughter of half a million people in Syria, it disgracefully gangs up on the one true democracy in the Middle East, Israel, and calls the Western Wall “occupied territory.” The Obama administration not only failed to protect Israel against this gang-up at the UN, it colluded with it behind the scenes. Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump and with all our friends in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, to negate the harmful effects of this absurd resolution.”

Read more here.

Obama's harmful and disgraceful action toward Israel

Elliott Abrams writes in the Weekly Standard,

For all eight years of the Obama administration, Democrats have made believe that Barack Obama is a firm and enthusiastic supporter and defender of the Jewish state. Arguments to the contrary were not only dismissed but angrily denounced as the products of nothing more than vicious partisanship. Obama's defenders repeatedly used the trope that "Israel should not be a partisan issue," as if Obama's views and actions were beyond reproach. A whole corps of Jewish leaders, some at the major organizations and many from Chicago, showed far greater loyalty to Obama than to the tradition of true nonpartisanship when it came to Middle East policy.

All of those arguments have been ground into dust by Obama's action Friday allowing a nasty and harmful anti-Israel resolution to pass the United Nations Security Council. Just weeks before leaving office, he could not resist the opportunity to take one more swipe at Israel—and to do real harm. So he will leave with his record on Israel in ruins, and he will leave Democrats even worse off.

It's pretty clear that he does not care. Obama has gotten himself elected twice, the second time by a decreased margin (the only time a president has been re-elected by fewer votes than in his first term), but he has laid waste to his party. In the House, the Senate, the state governorships, and the state legislatures, the Democrats have suffered loss after loss. Today's anti-Israel action will further damage the Democratic party, by driving some Jews if not toward the Republicans then at least away from the Democrats and toward neutrality. Donald Trump's clear statement on Thursday that he favored a veto, Netanyahu's fervent pleas for one, and the Egyptian action in postponing the vote show where Obama stood: not with Israel, not even with Egypt, but with the Palestinians. Pleas for a veto from Democrats in Congress were ignored by the White House.

Does the resolution matter? It does. The text declares that "the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law." This may turn both settlers—even those in major blocs like Maale Adumim, that everyone knows Israel will keep in any peace deal—and Israeli officials into criminals in some countries, subject to prosecution there or in the International Criminal Court. The text demands "that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem." Now add this wording to the previous line and it means that even construction in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City is "a flagrant violation under international law." The resolution also "calls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967." This is a call to boycott products of the Golan, the West Bank, and parts of Jerusalem, and support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.

Yet Barack Obama thought this was all fine and refused to veto. Settlements have been an obsession for Obama since the second day of his term in office, January 22, 2009. That day he appointed George Mitchell to be his special peace envoy, and adopted the view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the key to peace in the entire region and that freezing construction in settlements was the key to Israeli-Palestinian peace. But even if you believe all that—and looking at the Middle East today, no sensible person can—to allow this resolution to pass goes far beyond a flat demand for a settlement freeze. It is a strike against Israel. The inclusion of the usual language calling upon "both parties" to show "calm and restraint" and avoid "provocative actions" and "incitement" is pablum meant to attract European votes—and perhaps to attract Barack Obama.

But in fact, there is no possible way that this resolution will advance the cause of peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
So when the crunch came yesterday, Israelis had to turn to Egypt to postpone a U.N. vote. Think about that: there is more trust between Israel and Egypt today than between either of them and the United States.

Read more here.

"Why are these monstrous international organizations suffered to exist?"

Jillian Becker writes at The Atheist Conservative,

This month, December 2016, Amnesty International sponsored a rally in Brussels, where Muslim speakers celebrated the 9/11 attacks, denied the Holocaust, and demonized gays and Jews.

Amnesty International, founded in Britain in 1961 to help political prisoners wherever they may be, became long ago – close on forty years ago by our reckoning – an anti-humanitarian, terrorist-supporting, often communist-led, anti-West institution.

It is quite as bad, though much smaller in size and effect, as the United Nations with its many iniquitous sub-agencies.

Among our posts exposing the extreme turpitude of the UN, and especially of its Human Rights Council (UNHRC), are these: The UN curbs freedom of speech, June 20, 2008; America begs, August 26, 2010; Beyond outrageous, Sept 1, 2010; A contumelious farce, March 2, 2011.

And see the excellent articles by Claudia Rosett, a great authority on the appalling UN.

In September 2015, the Obama administration welcomed the appointment of Saudi Arabia – one of the most oppressive regimes in the world – to head a United Nations Human Rights Council panel.

Why are these monstrous international organizations suffered to exist?

It is a disgrace that the UN – Evil HQ as we call it – stands on American soil. It would fade away if the United States stopped hosting it and providing about a quarter of its revenue.

The UN must be destroyed!

“Migration is not the problem but the solution”

Virginia Hale reports at Breitbart,

The incoming Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) told a room of policymakers in Europe on Wednesday that “migration is not the problem but the solution”, and said politicians should ignore voters.
Speaking in Lisbon at the Vision Europe Summit, António Guterres said European nations have no right to control their borders and that they must instead take in floods of the world’s poorest people.

Read more here.

Nikki Haley to be United Nations ambassador

Trump announced he is picking Nikki Haley as Ambassador to the United Nations.
Breitbart reports,

Haley is the daughter of Indian immigrants and was the first woman governor of South Carolina.

Under her leadership, South Carolina’s unemployment hit a 15-year low, as she created 82,000 jobs in her state.

What began as a moral force has become a moral farce

I agree. Get the US out of the UN!

Were the Birchers right about the UN?

In their discussion of the alt-right, Hugh Hewitt and Jonah Goldberg mentioned William F. Buckley driving the John Birchers out of the conservative movement. Here is what I remember about the Birchers. When I was living in Texas, the Birchers put up billboards urging Americans to get out of the United Nations. I don't know what else they advocated, but the UN issue seemed to be their biggest issue. I think they were right on that issue. What do you think?

Obama plans to let the UN have the internet

Claudia Rosett writes at PJ Media,

In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, columnist Gordon Crovitz sounds an urgent warning about President Obama’s plans, during his final months in office, to fundamentally transform the internet. It’s an intricate tale, but the bottom line is that unless Congress acts fast, the World Wide Web looks likely to end up under control of the UN.

That would be the same UN that serves as a global clubhouse for despotic regimes that like to wield censorship as a basic tool of power. Russia and China occupy two of the five veto-wielding permanent seats on the UN Security Council. Iran since 2012 has presided over one of the largest voting blocs in the 193-member General Assembly, the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement. Among the current members of the Human Rights Council are Venezuela, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia — where blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced in 2014 to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes, for blog posts the Saudi government considered insulting to Islam.

We’re talking here about the same UN which for generations has proven incorrigibly corrupt, opaque and inept at managing almost anything except its own apparently endless expansion and self-serving overreach. This is the UN of the Oil-for-Food worldwide web of kickbacks; the UN of the evidently chronic problem of peacekeepers raping minors they are sent to protect; the UN that can’t manage to adequately audit its own books, and offers its top officials an “ethics” program of financial disclosure under which they are entitled to opt out of disclosing anything whatsoever to the public.

...Crovitz adds: “Congress still has time to extend its ban on the Obama administration giving up protection of the internet.” But not a lot of time. The deadline is Sept. 30th.

Read more here.