Lie — The United Nations is not a joke

The United Nations Charter

Each member of the United Nations agrees to the terms of its Charter. Included in those terms are:

• Chapter I, Article 2, Point 3: All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
• Chapter I, Article 2, Point 4: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

That is, every member has agreed not to use war to settle disputes, and not even to threaten such an action.

In the more than 70 years since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, none of its members has ever started a war, and none of its members has ever used threat of force. Any members considering such things are quickly approached by the other members, who immediately step in and peacefully resolve the impending conflict.

Oh wait, that's not quite true. But in principle, if we ignore reality, that's how it works.

Goodwill Ambassador

In October 2017, Robert Mugabe was appointed to be a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations. For decades this dictator of Zimbabwe has led a brutal repressive regime that has impoverished his country. His selection was so obviously bad that leaders around the world condemned it, and as a result, the United Nations retracted his appointment.

What's really surprising about this affair is not that this appointment was made in the first place, but that anyone noticed or cared.

Goodwill Ambassador is a relatively minor position, and such an event at the United Nations is hardly unusual enough to be newsworthy. Far worse appointments have been and will continue to be made.

Kurt Waldheim

Kurt Waldheim claimed to have been medically discharged from the army in 1942 and said he knew nothing about Nazi war crimes. But records show that he actually served in the German army until 1945. In Yugoslavia in 1942 he was unaware of the frequent shooting of prisoners only a few hundred metres from his office, or of what happened at the nearby Jasenovac concentration camp. As an ordnance officer in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1943, he claimed to not have noticed that during a few week period one third of the city's population was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Kurt Waldheim might not have been a war criminal himself, but he certainly made a great effort to hide the reality of his past. Despite this background, Waldheim was chosen as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 through 1981.

In response to a telegram sent to Waldheim by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, applauding the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympics in Germany, a spokesman for the Secretary-General said that it wasn't his practice to comment on such things. But when Israel later freed over a hundred airline passengers being held hostage at the Entebe airport, Waldheim was more than willing to comment, saying the rescue was a serious violation of the national sovereignty of Uganda.

Commission on Women

The United Nations Commission on Women, which presumably exists to defend their rights, not remove them, has included members such as Libya, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, where women aren't even allowed to drive a car.

In 2017, the Commission on the Status of Women issued only one condemnation of women's rights resolution. The United Nations Economic and Social Council ratified it. Responsible for the many violations of women's rights reported, only one nation in the entire world was mentioned. That nation was Israel.

Only one nation (Israel itself) voted against the condemnation of Israel. 30 other nations supported it: Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Congo, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ghana, Guyana, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Liberia, Malawi, Mongolia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, and Uruguay.

If the United Nations is to be taken seriously, it means that every country in the world, in particular those that voted for this resolution, treat women so much better than Israel does that they weren't even worth mentioning as a Taking note item, much less as part of the litany of Expressing deep concern, Expressing grave concern, Deploring, Gravely concerned, and Condemning items directed against Israel.

No other nation was even listed in the Call upon category, much less the Requests, Urges, and Demands that were directed at Israel.

Durban II

The United Nations World Conference Against Racism, known as Durban II, was boycotted by much of the free world, and saw many other western nations walk out during the conference.

It was chaired by Libya, with the vice-chairman-rapporteur from Cuba and other vice-chairs from such countries as South Africa, Iran, and Pakistan. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gave an opening day speech condemning Israel as totally racist and denying the Holocaust. The conference went downhill from there.

How such a collection of countries could be on a committee discussing racism (presumably to condemn it, not promote it), much less lead the entire conference, is beyond belief.

Agenda 21 - Sustainable Development

Using the admirable Sustainable Development catchphrase, Agenda 21 uses people's natural concern about the world's future to advance a more hidden agenda. A YouTube video, produced by the United Nations, defines sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It aims to accomplish this by meeting 17 goals that make everyone feel warm and fuzzy. You can watch this video (or read similar published documents) several times and still not get any real information out of it. But you'll end up feeling really hopeful about the future, knowing that something can be, and is being, done about it.

Over the last few decades, Agenda 21 has spread widely and deeply within western society. Non-profit organizations, particularly ICLEI, promote Agenda 21 and its goals to local and regional governments, who seem more than willing to accept its benefits. Something that makes voters feel good about themselves, about the future, and about what government is doing to protect them and their descendants; what more could a politician want?

The problem is, beyond the warm and fuzzy aspects, most of the actions being undertaken toward achieving these 17 vaguely defined goals don't actually do much good. Who cares that private land is expropriated in order to build bicycle paths that don't go anywhere and will barely be used? It's the appearance of doing something to improve our lifestyles and protect future generations that is important.

What these goals actually do accomplish though, is to increase the dependency of individuals on government, to get citizens comfortable with governments that are able to control things for the good of their future. And with regional committees and councils and public meetings, it's easy to fool people into thinking that they are actually providing useful input and helping make decisions. (Exercise: check the historical definition of soviet and research how the Delphi Method can be abused.)

It's not the Big Brother state that we need to worry about (that's already here); it's the Big Mother state that we should fear. From hard-line communists to well meaning soft-hearted people, many individuals and groups have been promoting that society for over a century, a society without private property, in which everything is a service and nothing is a commodity. And with its Agenda 21, the United Nations adds yet another powerful tool to accomplish it.

(If you think this is nothing but paranoid conspiracy theory nonsense, look into how the citizens of Kodiak Alaska realized what was about to happen to them and how they stopped their city council from adopting an Agenda 21 policy. Then, realizing that Agenda 21 is real, and that some people are willing and able to defeat it locally, research what Agenda 21 and ICLEI are really about. But be very wary of anything that presents vague glowing descriptions without actually giving any real facts.)

Read UN Agenda 21 for a more detailed description.

Human Rights Council

Since its creation in 2006 up until August 2015, the United Nations Human Rights Council issued over a hundred condemnations of countries for their violation of basic human rights. If you think of countries where we frequently hear of rights being ignored, you might think of some of the following:

• Syria: 17
• Myanmar: 12
• North Korea: 8
• Belarus: 5
• Iran: 5
• Eritrea: 4
• Sri Lanka: 3
• Libya: 2
• Sudan: 2
• Honduras: 1

As the counts show, these countries have been condemned by the Council. But you might have thought of many other countries too, such as:

• Afghanistan
• Algeria
• Bangladesh
• Cambodia
• China
• Congo
• Cuba
• D.R. Congo
• Egypt
• Equatorial Guinea
• Iraq
• Lebanon
• Nigeria
• Pakistan
• Qatar
• Russia
• Saudi Arabia
• Somalia
• South Sudan
• Turkey
• Uganda
• UAE
• Uzbekistan
• Venezuela
• Yeman
• Zimbabwe

Yet strangely, not one of them has ever been issued a condemnation.

As deserving as those first ten countries were of their condemnations, and as deserving as many of the other countries should have been, there is one additional country that received 62 separate condemnations by the Council. That's well over half of all the condemnations ever issued by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Even more amazing, during its first year of operation, the Council issued 11 condemnations, every one of them against that one country.

And that country? Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, the only country with religious and racial freedom, the only country that accepts immigrants and allows them to become citizens, and the only country that treats women as people.

If the United Nations is to be believed, over a ten year period the state of Israel violated more human rights than every country in the rest of the world put together. If the United Nations is to be believed, during a one year period, the state of Israel committed eleven human rights violations, each of which was far worse than anything that happened in any other country in the world. If the United Nations is to be taken seriously, so pernicious is the Israel problem that the Council meetings need to have a permanent Item 7 on the agenda, dedicated specifically to that one country.

It's rather obvious that the United Nations is not to be believed, and not to be taken seriously.