MORE ON THE U.N.

United Nations deputy secretary-general Mark Malloch Brown has a singular view of what constitutes international diplomacy. He said in a speech recently that the American public is ignorant of the importance and effectiveness of the UN because of the U.S. government's tolerance of "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping." .... In fact, during its six decades, the overall record of the United Nations has been so rife with failure, corruption and incompetence -- to say nothing of poor judgment, rudeness and condescension, as exemplified by Mr. Malloch Brown -- that it deserves to be disdained.

The organization's best known interventions -- attempts to attain and maintain peace -- too often have been exercises in lowest-common-denominator diplomacy that progresses at a glacial pace; and its essays into public health and environmental protection are frequently disastrous failures. The UN's leaders and programs consistently lack an appreciation for the relationship between wealth creation and public and environmental health. Mr. Malloch Brown's boss, Secretary General Kofi Annan, has expressed the hope that concern for "intellectual property" will not "get into the way" of producing and distributing drugs for a potential avian-flu pandemic. In other words, companies that make drugs and vaccines should abandon their intellectual property at Mr. Annan's whim.

Even if the recent incidents of corruption, dishonesty and profiteering -- exemplified by the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal and its coverup, sexual abuse of refugees by UN officials and peacekeepers, the botched investigation of the assassination of Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri, and procurement scams -- are anomalies, it is hard to explain away the anti-social outcomes of business as usual.

Nothing the UN has inflicted on innovation is worse than its record on biotechnology applied to agriculture and food production. At the UN's Task Force on Biotech Foods (which operates under the auspices of something called the Codex Alimentarius Commission, itself a creature of the World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization), only gene-spliced products are addressed, a scope that has been condemned by experts repeatedly as unscientific and indefensible. The work of the task force prevents the wider diffusion of a superior technology for agriculture and food production and is directly detrimental to farmers, consumers, academic researchers and industry worldwide. It will exacerbate malnutrition and starvation in the developing world....

The UN's assault on innovation and wealth creation demands a counter-attack. The United States and other like-minded nations can provide the firepower by withholding funds and participation from UN agencies and programs that are corrupt or incompetent. Better still, they should cease paying any dues at all until the entire organization undergoes fundamental and genuine reform.

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ELSEWHERE

There is an amusing article here pointing out how anti-American New Zealanders are. The article really has no explanation for the phenomenon. But the explanation is simple. New Zealanders hate Australians too. Because of their past and present socialism, New Zealand is much poorer than Australia and their more capable young people often migrate to Australia for the higher wages. New Zealanders hate that. It has given them a national inferiority complex -- manifested by hating anyone who is more successful than they are. And as the world's most powerful nation, America is hated most of all. New Zealanders as a whole -- with honourable individual exceptions -- are just infantile, that's all.

Stupid politically correct British police again: "A man with an IQ of just 69 is believed to be the trigger behind the bungled terror raid in Forest Gate, East London. Ex-waiter Mohammed Abu Bakr Mansha, 22, was a childhood pal of the two brothers arrested in the dawn swoop by police two weeks ago. In January he was jailed for six years for terror offences - and even described in court as an "utter incompetent". Soon afterwards, friends of brothers Abul Kahar, 23, and Abul Koyair, 20, visited him at top-security Belmarsh, South-East London. And, the Sunday Mirror has learned, that meeting sparked a surveillance operation on the men by the security services. (HT Spy blog)

British borders wide open: "Ministers were accused yesterday of leaving Britain's borders wide open to drug smugglers, criminal gangs and terrorists because too few customs officers operate at ports and airports. The Government's anti- terror watchdog criticised a new method of border control that has left some of the busiest airports unmanned in a switch to mobile patrols. Lord Carlile of Berriew, QC, said that customs officers were "too thinly spread" and was supported by police chiefs voicing private concerns that ports of entry were left unprotected."

Leftist Episcopalians too queer for some: "The Anglican Church descended into "ecclesiastical anarchy" last night as American traditionalists refused to accept the authority of a woman and asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to lead them instead. Liberals celebrated the election of Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church while the traditionalist Fort Worth Diocese appealed to Dr Rowan Williams for "alternative primatial oversight". The appeal, being mulled over at Lambeth Palace, is expected to be the first of several. It represents the first formal step towards a schism that evangelicals say began with the consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003."

Woman Slain Because She Was White: "The trial of a man accused of murder as a hate crime continues Tuesday in White Plains, N.Y. Phillip Grant, who is black, is charged with murdering a woman in the Galleria shopping mall because she was white. Concetta Russo-Carriero, 56, was stabbed to death at lunchtime June 29 in the parking garage of the mall as she walked to her car, just a block from the courthouse. In opening arguments Monday, Assistant District Attorney Timothy Ward said the victim was targeted by Grant, who was planning a murder motivated by "hatred of white people." Defense attorney Eugene Traynor said in his opening statement that police had arrested the wrong man. He told jurors that Grant, a convicted rapist, was never positively identified by a witness.... The murder charge against Grant became a hate-crime charge after he told police he killed the woman because she was white. "All I knew was she had blond hair and blue eyes and she had to die," he said in a videotaped statement that was played at a pretrial hearing. "If I'd have had a gun today, there'd be a lot of dead white people on the streets of White Plains."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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