The United Nations: worse than useless

Whom to back: the United Nations or the BBC? It's one of those Iran/Iraq pity-they-can't-both-lose dilemmas but, on balance, I'm with the Beeb. 

The UN has strenuously denied covering up an investigation into the sale of illicit arms by its officials to Congolese rebels. And you can see why its functionaries are so sensitive. I mean, it's one thing to be called useless: sitting around in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami holding press conferences while the Australian and US navies were on site distributing aid that's useless. Running oil-for-fraud boondoggles in Iraq that's useless.

But selling weapons to murderous militiamen: that's in the worse than useless category. Not for the first time, the UN is actively bringing evil into the world. To be sure, it has done more outrageous things in the past, as when it herded Muslim men into Sarajevo, methodically disarmed them and then handed them over to Serb militiamen to be shot, or when it ordered its commanding officer in Rwanda not to seize the arms caches that were about to be used for the genocide. Still, even by UN standards, these are serious allegations.

It's extraordinary how we keep ignoring the actual UN in favour of some theoretical one. However much its bureaucrats engage in fraud, however often its officials are found running smuggling rackets or child prostitution rings, we still maintain that the UN embodies a lofty ideal. And that, of course, is the problem. The automatic benefit of the doubt will, over time, destroy even the most robust institutions.

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G20 conclusions will make the dowturn worse

Posted By: Daniel Hannan at Apr 2, 2009 at 18:58:51 [General]

Posted in:

A trillion here, a trillion there: pretty soon you're talking real money. To see what a trillion dollars looks like, click ...va&aid=12754">here

The BBC is exulting in $1.1 trillion being "pumped into the world economy". But where the dickens do they suppose it is being taken from in the first place, if not "the world economy"? And where is it all going? Partly, in development aid: an expensive way of transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. Mainly, though, to international bureaucracies: you know, the ones on whose watch all this happened.

At the same time, we will spend a lot more on national regulation. So, let's get this straight: the organisations that screwed up last year, such as the FSA in Britain, are to be rewarded with more moolah and greater powers. Finally, as Nicolas Sarkozy put it, we have "turned the page on Anglo-Saxon capitalism". Under the guise of cracking down on tax-havens, we have realised the long-standing Continental ambition to have a global financial regime, so as to prevent pesky English-speaking states being unreasonably competitive.

Just what we need to stimulate growth then, eh? More dirigisme, more red tape, more state control, more centralisation. And the markets have risen. Will you never learn, boys?

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