"Let me be perfectly clear...make no mistake about it": Syria Edition

[SlowwHand]

You know what you get when you have a person with OCD and ADD? Everything has to be perfect, but not for long.

[kentonio]

I think they'd rather deal with the wimp U.N., yes I do. The U.N. has shown time and again that it's a worthless organization.

The UN is only 'worthless' if you expect it to be an American puppet existing only to rubber stamp US policy. Is the idea of accepting you're just one country out of several hundred each with their own agendas really so hard to grasp?

[Wezil]

It's busted Ken. The inmates run the asylum.

The process turned the UN’s important work of monitoring international human rights “into a spectacle of hypocrisy and farce,” said the Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch.

“The continued subversion of the UN human rights system — whereby thugs, murderers and rapists purport to judge the human rights record of a liberal democracy — undermines the founding principles and credibility of the United Nations,” said Hillel Neuer, a Canadian-born lawyer who directs UN Watch.

“The UN squandered a golden opportunity to contribute to the promotion and protection of human rights in Canada,” he said.

“It’s the foxes guarding the chickens, with the world’s worst tyrannies abusing a legitimate process … to deflect attention from their own sordid practices.”

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/04/26/north-korea-iran-attack-canadas-human-rights-record-at-un-forum/

Similar examples are endless.

[Dinner]

I think they'd rather deal with the wimp U.N., yes I do. The U.N. has shown time and again that it's a worthless organization.

The functions exactly as it was set up by the great powers to function. The every day stuff like humanitarian aid is delivered quickly and efficiently while the great powers still have the ability to block anything controversial which they don't like. That's hardly worthless though it is, sadly, working as designed.

[Wezil]

They are good at innoculating babies. I will give them that.

[kentonio]

Didn't they also cure smallpox through the WHO?

[Wezil]

...and watched genocide unfold in Rwanda...

[Wezil]

...and Bosnia...

[kentonio]

I'd see the failures as an impetus to make it work better. Without a UN things like Rwanda and Bosnia would happen anyway, and then would certainly lack any coordinated attempt to stop them.

[Wezil]

I'd see the failures as an impetus to make it work better.

Don't hold your breath.

Point me to one piece of serious reform being considered by the UN.

I used to volunteer for a local UN club. I wouldn't go near them with gloves these days.

[Wezil]

The main problem with the UN imho is the complete lack of standards. Any tyrant with enough guns to seize a country can take their seat then proceed to lecture.

[Zevico]

With human rights organisations headed by tyrannous regimes like North Korea, it's no wonder people have no patience for this entity.

[Wezil]

I truly wish it could live up to its ideals but sadly the UN is beyond fixing.

Maybe third time will be a charm.

[kentonio]

The main problem with the UN imho is the complete lack of standards. Any tyrant with enough guns to seize a country can take their seat then proceed to lecture.

While everyone else rolls their eyes. The alternative of course would be for the nations to vote on whether new governments should be allowed to join, and I can just imagine how that would turn out in the long run..

[Wezil]

There are other options. Meeting certain standards of human rights before sitting on a Human Rights commission for example.

Being represented and being put in a position to pronounce on others are two separate things.