Who picks up the tab for the grand UN theater which hands Ahmadinejad this ample world stage? The UN actually has a bewildering multiplicity of budgets, which altogether have swollen to well over $20 billion, or roughly ten times the size of the UN’s “core” or regular budget. But how much each of the UN’s 192 member states kicks in for the core budget is a pretty good crude guide to how much each member state contributes overall. So let’s take a look at that.
For the 2009 “regular” UN budget, totaling $2.7 billion, America paid its usual 22% of the total, or the substantial sum of $598 million. Iran, with its rulers wallowing in some of the world’s biggest oil and gas reserves, paid dues totaling less than than 1/100th of America’s largesse, chipping in a meager $4.3 million.
As for Israel, whose reporters the UN is evidently willing at Iranian behest to exclude from press gatherings on UN premises, Israel with 1/10th the population of Iran, paid twice as much in dues, or $10.2 million. If you’d like a look at what the rest of the UN gang pays, here’s the full roster — where you can ponder such disparities as the oil-rich despotism of Libya’s Qaddafi paying less than half the amount rendered up by the miniature state of Luxembourg. All of this is dwarfed by the sums lavished on the UN by U.S. taxpayers — who, beyond the $598 million in core dues, shell out billions every year for the larger UN system (in which, as I keep trying to remind people, Iran sits on the governing boards of — to name just a few — UNICEF, the UN Environment Program, the World Food Program, and the UN’s flagship agency, the UN Development Program — as well as having acquired a seat earlier this year on the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women).
In this setup, Iran plays while America pays. Is this furthering the cause of world peace? You tell me.
No, to further World Peace we need to stop paying the “discretionary” billions (which would be better spent here in the US) and, as Qadaffi said last year, move the UN to another country – Libya, Venezuela, Iran, China must all be prime candidates!
Move the UN to Detroit. Think of all the benefits. Think how much fun the delegates will have dealing with Detroit’s infrastructure instead of NY City’s. I would bet that many New Yorkers would be happy to ship the whole lot of them to Detroit.
The UN is an idea whose time has come and gone. It is a refuge for homicidal fanatics, thugs, petty tyrants, kleptomaniacs, and proponents of all things antithetical to the ideals of Western Civilization. Its humanitarian efforts have been rotted out by staggering ineptitude, incompetence and greed. Its bloated bureaucracy function as a self-regenerating pustule. It is time to lance this abcess festering on the shores of the East River. Let it move, lock stock and barrel to Libya, Iran, Lebanon or some other suck hole in thrall to the Arabs. The West would best be served by some other institution, or none at all. Raze it to the ground. Give it back to New York. Build the new twin towers there. Send a message to our enemies; no more Mr. Nice Guy. We could do with a lot less blathering, apologizing, and obsequiousness, and a lot more cold blooded action.
i was going to reply but i can’t think of anything to add…you said it all…:)
Why is this concept not a major political issue in the November election? I believe that a smart politician could run with this plank in his platform and win.
Of course, that might be TOO conservative for New Yorkers.
“Let it move” is no longer enough: let it wither and die, that is more like it. Dissolve the UN by the Western nations leaving it. Someone just needs to be the first to do so, with ideally the US as prime mover. Thus, a possible sinecure for Obama once he is relieved of office would be gone, too.
Move it to Pakistan.
The UN….who cares.
The end station of countless leftist career politicians from all over the world.
Why is it so difficult to scrap (suspend) diplomatic immunity and arrest that bastard A-jad on the first try of entry to the sovereign American soil? Then make him a short trial (2 hours max), Ceauşescu style, and just shoot him! Lot of problems would be solved quickly and cheaply. Note that the US do not have diplomatic relations currently with Iran.
But others do; there would be plenty of hostages in Teheran. It is better to attack militarily and catch the bastard in due course. With many of his henchmen who deserve the same fate.
He apparently has very little “power”…he is merely the lap dog that parrots the iranian rulers to the world.
No one seems to care what the US citizens think about our belonging to the UN, the tremendous $$$ we pay, and the “non” existent “power” WE (do not) have.
why is Israel paying anything? to fund reports that vilify them? ridiculous.
we should not be funding the anti-American anti-West UN any longer. give the money back to the American taxpayer, close up the building in Manhattan, and let them meet in Damascus.
this is beyond insane! shut down this corrupt and incompetent vanity fair, now.
P.S. I have never understood why Israel cares to be a member of the UN, an organisation run by unqualified, pathetic bureaucrats and brown-nosers (see resolution 242)
Ahmadinijad may be no angel but compared to the anti-American con man Netanyahu – he’s a Saint. As he said to Larry King: “Why does the Holocaust permit Israel to crucify the Palestinians?” King cut right to a commercial. The U.S. needs to cut the cord with Israel before we all die.
Could you imagine what would happen if Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were arrested here in New York City? Oh sure, there would be a fight with his body guards but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem for the FBI or the military. But think about it. Ahmadinejad would be arrested for various terrorist crimes against the United States (such as funding Taliban fighters in Afghanistan to kill American troops or for prividing Iranian funding and troops in Iraq). But, to show our “generosity,” we would bring him in chains and in an orange jump suit and dump him at the foot of his plane at Kennedy airport, where he would be allowed to go home. And we would tell him, “Next time, no more Mr. Nice guy, OK.” Could you imagine the message that would send to not only the Iranians, but to the rest of the world? It would probably start a war with Iran but, heck, it’s coming anyway, especially if they get a nuclear bomb. At least we would show the rest of the world that we’re still capable of standing up to dictators like this. One can only dream, especially with a guy like Obama in the White House.
Why arrest him? Just hold him hostage for 444 days.
Thanks, Bill Lawrence….what an application of poetic justice.
See also Anthony J. Mendez’s excellent “insider” book on his very dramatic role in that U.S. Embassy hostage crisis….titled appropriately “Master Of Disguise”..lest we forget.
Bill, you know, I like that!
Mike Huckabee said it well:
http://www.huckpac.com/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=2832
In a related matter the UN has appointed Mazlan Othman of Malaysia as official contact for aliens.
There is an article in the Telegraph about this as well so it doesn’t appear to be a joke, but I still have reservations about buying it whole hog.
I don’t know why, Al Franken is a senator and Steve Colbert is an expert on immigration.
Funding the UN is like funding the destruction of western civilization.
It matters little if America and a few counterparts left the room during another A-jad hate speech – they keep returning to the scene of the crime and are accessories to the farce.
We need to keep talking to our enemies(Iran, North Korea, Venezuela) and twisting the arms of our allies(Israel). That’s the liberal way.
The National Post has a short but pointed article about the joke that the UN has become – see Rex Murphy.
Sorry but imadinnerjacket needs to be taken out. That whole mid east is a big powder keg waiting to blow US up. We need to take decisive action. I don’t want to be killed all because we are worried that the world may think we are intolerant for not wanting to be destroyed!
@ 7. Amy:
Too much – the trip you are on is freakin me out. Never mind what planet, which universe are you living in?
She dwells at the intersection of Cowardice & Evil. Fear rules her, and the value of life is in extending her quivering one at the expense of decent people.
BTW, are you THE Tom Watson, you know, the guy that almost took out Stewart Cink last year?
Iran, a convenient red herring to distract Americans from what its government is doing. To wit, the U.S. claims to be committed to “fighting terror” while inking a $60 Billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, the heart of hateful and extremist ideology. Skeptical? The Kingdom’s state religion is Wahhabism, a hate cult of relatively recent vintage (200 years old?). And every time a Shia marketplace, pilgrimage, or holy site is attacked in Iraq, think “Saudi suicide bomber.” Apparently it isn’t politically correct for the media to mention our alleged “ally” in connection with these atrocities.
I keep saying similar things. Once you tie in the Bushes, they call you a Leftist troll and half the posters here stick a label on you. But you are right, Pablo, the crisis with Iran – the American refusal to deal with Iran – has provided a wonderful smokescreen for the care and feeding of the corporations getting rich off these deals.
The UN is nothing more than a money launder for the world. You send money to help people and it gets lost, sounds like our politicians, they excel at losing our money. The UN is all so used for a theatrical stage for some of the worlds biggest nut jobs { foreign leaders ] to make their big speeches to the world. The UN serves no purpose for America except to drain our money from us tax payers so we all can be equal in this world.Except the ones with the money will control all of us. Just like in the good old days, when we had kings and noble men and us peasants working for them. You remember the good old Fudelistic Times. I wonder if anyone has told China yet. How do you sing kombaya in Chinese?
It’s A’jad’s own little shtick, coming to The UN each year.
It’s where he had that “the room filled with light” moment (whatever) during his speech a few years ago. (oh, baby, I could feel the Mahdi!)
This time around, the 911 remarks (a parallel to his insane Holocaust remarks) & his stupid “Zionist” stuff, he deserved to be roundly ridiculed and laughed out of the room.
He should be an international joke, not some guy with an entourage occupying 6 floors of a NYC 5-star hotel, meeting with the despicable Muslim Brotherhood guys, Louis Farrakhan and representatives of the NBPP.
The fact that he wasn’t is a very bad sign of the times.
The basic failure of the United Nations is exactly like Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations which relied on moral persuasion and security based on the collection of the League. The League never had any chance of success. As soon as any of his nations found that its national self-interest was threatened, the League could go run and hide. The US funds 22% of the UN budget. As of 1 January 2008, the top 10 providers of assessed financial contributions to United Nations peacekeeping operations were: the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, China, Canada, Spain and the Republic of Korea.
This is all inevitable. Empowered, competitionless, peerless organizations are guaranteed to grow in grotesque and destructive ways. The UN attracts the dregs of society to work for it, because that is the nature of the organization, itself, and it will only get worse.
Anyone who has any understanding of the simplest notions of evolutionary theory, or capitalist theory, knows that such ultra-monopolies can never be allowed to exist, since there are no external controls on them, at all. It is not just folly to promote the existence of such entities, as the UN, but straight-up stupidity and a lack of thought that should render such people ineligible to hold any positions of power (in normal structures) at all.
Any politician who supports the existence of an empowered UN is too dumb, and far too dangerous, to be allowed any power. Eventually, people will understand this, as the UN will just worse and worse.
I consider all supporters of an empowered UN to be the ultimate scum of the Earth, people who are so far beyond help that they do not even deserve the benefits of civilized society, since their support of such an unnatural and insane entity would work to destroy civilization, itself. A little look at the whole nuke issue shows how that goes.
UN supporters must all be tossed out of power and forced to roam the streets as homeless people, since only then will they no longer be a threat to the rest of us.
The U.S. has been more than generous to Arab and Muslim nations in direct foreign aid, military assistance and other ways. Egypt receives about $2 billion of American taxpayer dollars every year, yet it still votes against American interests at the U.N. 79 percent of the time. Jordan, a “moderate” Muslim nation, receives nearly $200 million annually in U.S. foreign aid, but votes against America at the U.N. 71 percent of the time. Pakistan votes 75 percent of the time against the U.S. at the U.N. while pocketing nearly $7 million annually in foreign aid (in addition to the money it gets to supposedly fight al-Qaida).
An even better example of the disconnect between American assistance and changed Muslim attitudes toward the U.S. is the Palestinian Authority. As former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger writes for ynetnews.com, just since 2007, “U.S. foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority and to PA-controlled (nongovernmental organizations) reached nearly $2 billion, in addition to $3.7 billion contributed by the U.S. to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East since 1950.”
If the news has the word “United Nations” in it, it’s guaranteed, definite, surefire, cast iron, in the bag, clear cut, assured, straightforward, a sure thing, that it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.