Enough Already

John Bolton's fabulous performance in front of congress this week should be applauded.

But now it's time to bring him home and get US out of the United Nations. In what has become theater of the absurd, the UN Committee Against Torture is going to "grill" the United States about our interpretation of torture and rate our record on the issue.

Here is an example of the brilliant questions the 10 "independent" "experts" will ask:

The committee is demanding the United States explain why it established secret prisons, what rules and methods of interrogation it employs, and whether the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush assumes responsibility for alleged acts of torture committed by American agents outside U.S. territory.

Why do we have secret prisons? Because we are at war.

What rules and methods of interrogation we employ? Harsh ones because we are at war.

Does the Bush administration assume responsibility for alleged acts of torture? Yes, and it has sentenced to prison many soldiers who have engaged in torture--even though we are at war.

I have a question for the UN. What better things could it be doing than wagging its finger and holding investigations into alleged US "torture?"

1. Iran (that tortures)
2. Sudan (that tortures)
3. China (that tortures)
4. Syria (that tortures)
5. North Korea (that tortures)
6. Palestinian territory (that tortures)
7. Burma (that tortures)
8. Zimbabwe (that tortures)
9. Eritrea (that tortures)
10. Somalia (that tortures)
11. Cuba (that tortures)
12. Russia (that tortures)

There's a dozen productive things the UN could be doing.

Posted by Aaron at 07:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Will History Repeat Itself?

Via Breitbart:

The British, French and German foreign ministers said Thursday that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program had reached a "dead end" and the Islamic republic should be referred to the U.N. Security Council.

Why anyone thinks the U.N. can do anything to end the stalemate is beyond me. The U.N. signed off on numerous resolutions against Iraq, yet did nothing to enforce the penalties it threatened. Like a parent that constantly threatens punishment but does not follow through, the U.N. sings the same old tune...and like a naughty child who knows he won't get smacked, Iran (like Iraq before it) sits smirking with its hand in the cookie jar.

Don't bring up the "Where are the WMDs question?" here, because it is beside the point. At the time of the resolutions, the U.N. and everyone else thought Saddam Hussein had WMDs, yet they did nothing. Now, Iran is known to have nuclear capabilities without the maturity to keep itchy fingers off of the red button. And yet some are still heeding the siren call of the U.N.

When will people learn? When it's too late?

Posted by Pam at 06:44 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Not Cowed by Kofi

Kofi Annan's attempt to embarrass journalist James Bone at a press conference the other day was surprising, to say the least, since Annan's public demeanor is usually quite cool:

Bone had just said that some of the UN leader's account of events in the oil-for-food scandal "don't really make sense" when Mr Annan interrupted him to say: "I think you're being very cheeky. Listen, James Bone, you have been behaving like an overgrown schoolboy in this room for many, many months and years.

"You are an embarrassment to your colleagues and to your profession. Please stop misbehaving, and please let's move on to a more serious subject."

Normally I would think such a set-down was funny, as the press often deserves it. However, coming from Kofi Annan, whose son was involved in one of the greatest global frauds ever, it was a poor attempt to shut Bone up. Annan's own role has never been satisfactorily examined either. However, like most journalists, Bone won't shut up. From his article today on the TimesOnline:

For months journalists were told that the UN could not answer any questions because the scandal was under investigation by the Volcker inquiry. Since the Volcker panel issued its last report in October, the UN has refused to answer any questions because it says the matter has already been investigated. Yet the inquiry raised more questions than it answered, the most important being: what did Kofi Annan know and when did he know it?

Guess he's not ready to be cowed by Kofi. Read it!

Posted by Pam at 09:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Where in the World is Kofi Annan?

Wherever he is, he isn't where Katrina hit.

Click here to see today's UN news. Nowhere does it mention anything about the aftermath of Katrina. No UN-sponsored relief efforts, no Kofi dashing down for a photo op. However, you might be pleased to know that Kofi is cutting his vacation short in order to prepare for a summit in September...the next in a very long line of summits. And of course, there is no criticism being aimed at him over his conspicuous absence.

Some might argue that America, as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, doesn't need UN or other foreign aid. Perhaps. But even the very small comfort of Kofi's "moral support" in a time of great crisis in our deep South might go a long way toward healing the ever-widening rift between the US and the UN.

No, we don't need the money. Donations from generous Americans and money from various funds will cover the losses. But is it that hard to make a statement? Call a press conference? We know how much bureaucrats love press conferences...

I guess we'll have to muddle along without Kofi.

Posted by Pam at 10:21 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

U.N. Watch: The U.N. vs. Zimbabwe

The U.N. has written a "harshly worded report" condemning the Zimbabwean government's razing of urban slums, a move which has left over 700,000 people homeless and without employment.

"While purporting to target illegal dwellings and structures and to clamp down on alleged illicit activities, (the operation) was carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering," says the executive summary, obtained late Thursday by The Associated Press.

The report, using unusually harsh language for the United Nations, says the operation clearly violates international law and demands the government stop the destruction immediately.

While I applaud the condemnation of yet another atrocity perpetrated by Zimbabwe's "duly elected" president Robert Mugabe (and the thugs he employs to do his dirty work), I seriously doubt the "harshly worded report" will amount to more than a hill of beans when all is said and done.

The U.N. is a bunch of niminy piminy bureaucrats who crave world power, but don't know what to do with what little power they currently have. Consider the fact that they issued numerous resolutions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, warning him of dire consequences if he didn't disarm or allow arms inspectors in. He didn't. Yes, there were dire consequences, but who dished them out? The U.S., Britain, Italy, Poland and others who joined an alliance to stamp out the evil perpetrated and rooted in Iraq. What did the U.N. do? Kofi Annan called the war "illegal." Thanks for the help, Kofi.

The U.N. is also quite unable to do what it should be best at doing, which is distributing humanitarian aid to nations in need. Consider the flop which was the Oil-for-Food program (it ended up lining the pockets of both Saddam Hussein and U.N. bureaucrats) and the sexual abuse of women and children in the Congo by U.N. "peacekeepers" who were there (ostensibly) to protect them.

Let's see...U.N. peacekeepers rape women and children but no one demands that they get out of the Congo (or elsewhere where innocents are vulnerable), while American soldiers legitimately interrogate prisoners of war in Guantanamo Bay and people are shouting that we need to close the facility down.

What's up with that?

So here we have another U.N. proclamation condemning the evil, brutal actions of another Third World despot, but what will be done about it? The U.N. is basically like an ineffectual parent: the kind who threatens all sorts of punishment if the rules are broken, but ultimately is too wimpy to follow through. The child then continues with more and more outrageous behavior until he is completely out of control and the parent throws up his hands and says, "I don't know what went wrong."

We'll see if the U.N. follows up this "report" with any action. But I doubt it.

Posted by at 08:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Another Fund From the U.N.

The would-be world government, the U.N., has unveiled a fund aimed at curing yet another one of the world's ills:

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has announced the creation of a fund to promote democratric institutions and practices around the world - an idea first proposed by the United States.

Gad, what were we thinking?

The United Nations currently supports emerging democracies with legal, technical and financial assistance and advice. Nonetheless, the secretary-general [Kofi Annan] has said the United Nations needs to improve coordination of democracy building activities and mobilization of resources.

The General Assembly said the fund will provide assistance "for projects that consolidate and strengthen democratic institutions and facilitate democratic governance in new or restored democracies."

It's a noble cause indeed. But let's see...the Oil-for-Food probe is still incomplete, with neither Kofi Annan nor his son Kojo in the clear. Nuclear bomb plans go missing from U.N. files. And, a scandal involving U.N. peackeepers sexually abusing women and children in Africa has yet to be investigated.

And we expect the U.N. to be able to competently oversee this latest cache of money? Someone pinch me, I must be dreaming.

Posted by at 09:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kristof on the Debt

There are few things more embarrassing to watch than non-economists lecture about the economy. Nick Kristof tries his luck this morning, and it's like an accident on the highway; no matter how much you try to avert your gaze, you can't help peeking at the carnage.

Another issue is that three-fourths of our new debt is now being purchased by foreigners, with China the biggest buyer of all. That gives China leverage over us, and it undermines our national security.

Sigh. Anybody remember when the Japanese were buying up America? Michael Crichton wrote a book about it, Rising Sun (which makes his current debunking of another Chicken Little "disaster", global warming, rather ironic).

The fact is that at the end of the day, the books have to be balanced. China has pegged its currency to the dollar, but by any measure, the yuan is now substantially undervalued. When one country exports more to another country than it imports, inevitably what happens is that the currency of the former rises to even things out. That's what happened in the late 1980s with the yen, which went from 220 to the dollar to 80 to the dollar in a few years.

Now think about that. Suppose you were a Japanese investor who plunked down $100 million to purchase an office building in the US back in 1988. In Japanese yen, that was Y22 billion. Assuming that the building remained stable in value, at the end of 1992, that investment was worth Y8 billion, a decline of about 60%.

The money lost in those investments represented the balancing of the books, and that's inevitably what the Chinese face with their investments here. And the irony is that they can't avoid it. When one country exports more to another than it imports, it inevitably affects the currency of both countries.

When China sells to the US, it gets dollars. But it doesn't want dollars, it wants yuan. So it sells the dollars to a money broker, who then turns around and buys yuan from American exporters for dollars. But when there is an imbalance between the two, pretty quickly the money broker realizes that he's got more demand for yuan than he does for dollars. So he adjusts the prices, charging more for yuan to balance things out.

By pegging their currency to the dollar, the Chinese have avoided this fate (for now). However, their only other option is to invest the dollars earned in the US, because the money brokers certainly won't exchange it at that artificially low rate. In effect the Chinese government has become the money broker, and they are quietly losing money on every transaction. Long term, they can't keep it up, especially as their economy continues to grow.

So don't worry about the Chinese buying up all our debt; we'll be paying them back with cheaper dollars.

He appears to be learning from Krugman. Check out this little sleight of hand:

More than two centuries of American government produced a cumulative national debt of $5.7 trillion when Mr. Bush was elected in 2000. And now that is expected to almost double by 2010, to $10.8 trillion.

On a percentage of GDP basis, the current deficits are far lower than the Reagan era deficits. And if you look at the US economy's performance, it pretty quickly becomes obvious that deficits presage good economic times, not bad ones. As the government gets closer to surplus, the economy starts to sour; see late 2000 for the most recent example.

Kristof closes with a cliched analysis of the debt:

President Bush has excoriated the "death tax," as he calls the estate tax. But his profligacy will leave every American child facing a "birth tax" of about $150,000.

Why is this so dumb? Because it completely ignores who actually pays taxes in America. Kristof's analysis would make sense if everybody in America were faced with an IOU for $150,000 and expected to make payments with interest at say, 5% per annum. But that's not what happens. Instead, the debt service gets paid, along with the other services the government provides, by the taxpayers. Which these days are mostly the wealthy; something like 50% of all adults don't pay federal income taxes at all. Effectively the sons and daughters of the wealthy are presented with the IOU, and the sons and daughters of the poor get a free ride.

Posted by pat at 10:12 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Bomb Blueprints Go Missing at UN

Why the heck isn't this story getting more press? In addition to the usual misplaced money,

Now electronic drawings that give comprehensive details of how to build and test equipment essential for making nuclear bombs have vanished from the UN and UN investigators are saying they could show up sale anytime on the international black market...

In essence, the missing blueprints detail how to manufacture the components for a uranium centrifuge, what materials are needed, how to assemble the machines, and how to test them.

Canada Free Press has all of the details.

Heaven forbid the MSM should print another embarrassing story about the continued bumbling at the U.N. by Kofi and Pals. (Sounds like one of those old children's shows from the '50s and '60s, doesn't it?)

(I originally posted this on Blogmeister USA.)

Posted by at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

UN Grants NoKo Defectors Refugee Status

This article really surprised me. The United Nations, by declaring North Korean defectors refugees, bars China from sending them back to North Korea. This is a big development:

The designation will be made in a report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on North Korea, Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, to be presented at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, in March, says Jubilee Campaign USA, according to the Assist News Service.

Muntarbhorn was appointed in July 2004 with a mandate to investigate and report on human rights violations in North Korea and begin a dialogue with its government.

Jubilee Campaign's Ann Buwalda said that for the past three years, her group has been pressing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to give refugee protection to North Koreans who are fleeing their homeland, which suffers famine and political repression under the harsh dictatorship of Kim Jong Il.

Buwalda said China, a signatory to the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol relating to the status of refugees, has "persistently sought" to characterize all North Koreans fleeing into its territory as "economic migrants."
By so doing, she said, China can justify breaking the treaty's requirement that the North Koreans not be sent home.

On the same day, the North Korean government threatens to turn US bases into a "Sea of Fire." The South Korean government responded by issuing a white paper describing the US response:

The U.S. would dispatch 690,000 troops and 2,000 warplanes in the event of a serious conflict.

"The United States has a plan to send more than 40 percent of its entire Navy, more than half of its Air Force and more than 70 percent of its Marine Corps to defend South Korea," the white paper said. "This shows the United States is firmly determined in its will to help defend the Korean peninsula."

It mentioned 160 vessels and 1,600 additional aircraft would augment the troops and fighter jets.

Updated for the first time in four years, the brief now calls North Korea a "direct military threat," instead of the South's "main enemy," which it had been using for the past decade.

Posted by Aaron at 05:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack