Australian view of both Roberts & The UN
The Australian news site has a very interesting post today about the current UN oil for food scandel / incident and some unique views on the Robert’s nomination.
For days, The New York Times even obsessed over whether Roberts was a member of the Federalist Society, a legal group that believes in upholding the original interpretation of the US Constitution. Scary, huh?
It’s funny then that the media proctologists fail to display the same zeal on a genuine scandal. Around the same time an inquiry set up by the UN and headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker found, in its third interim report, that the Iraq oil-for-food program was riddled with corruption and fraud. Media scrutiny lasted all of a day or two.
This is a interesting take from a unique prespective, and they show parts of the UN scandel that have gone larger unreported, i.e. the amount of control the security council gave to Sadaam and just how broad the scandel was (1/2 of the companies involved were paying kickbacks to Sadaam based on the current reports). The Australian also calls for some real hard looks at the current UN situation where people seem to just look over problems as along as the problems seem minor or are invisible to most.
And therein lies the rub. While reform may at least reduce corruption in the administration of the UN, it can never make member countries less corrupt or more democratic. So, we should never take the UN too seriously. More to the point, we should never cede sovereignty to it. It is, inevitably, as deeply flawed as its members.
Good stuff.
