The UN’s ITU and the Internet: A Cautionary Tale
As the United Nations heads deeper into its Internet grab, a.k.a its 11-day telecom treaty conference, in Dubai, things aren’t going so well for America and the friends of freedom. The Hill reports that “A joint proposal from the United States and Canada aimed at keeping Internet regulations out of a global telecommunications treaty failed to secure early approval from other countries on Tuesday” — though talks may continue along these lines.
This conference has been convened by a Geneva-based UN outfit called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which for most of the world public is simply one more mysterious blob in the UN alphabet soup. To better understand the problem here, it might help to know that the makeup of the ITU pretty much mirrors that of the UN General Assembly — the UN body of 193 member states, dominated by the Iran-chaired Non-Aligned Movement and the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation, in which it is standard operating procedure that the U.S. and its democratic allies provide the bulk of the resources, and the thug regimes of the world decide how those resources should be used.
But let’s add to this some nitty-gritty, which largely escaped notice when it was first reported, in 2005, and since then seems to have slid right down the Memory Hole. While the getting and spending of the ITU usually attracts little notice, it did figure in the UN-authorized inquiry into the Oil-for-Food program in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The ITU was one of the UN agencies tasked to deliver humanitarian relief to the people of Iraq, in this case by way of developing the telecommunications system. This mission quickly got bogged down in Security Council concerns that Saddam would use a beefed-up telecom system for military purposes. But with funds flowing for the project, the ITU, undaunted by the realities, kept right on spending.
The result? As the Volcker inquiry reported, on Sept. 7, 2005: “While ITU spent less than $900,000 of Programme funds for humanitarian aid and services during the Programme, it spent more than $10 million in administrative costs.”
Even by wastrel standards of the UN, that’s spectacular: A 10-to-one ratio of administrative costs versus spending on the actual services. But that’s what happened when the UN tapped into Iraq’s oil sales, and the ITU, as part of that bonanza, tapped into a gusher of easy money. Has the ITU changed its ways? If so, it’s been more than modest about sharing the news. To the current concerns that this ITU treaty conference in Dubai may be seeking ways to regulate, tax and censor the Internet, we might also want to add the worry that there is a UN administrative apparatus here that needs to be kept as far as possible from filling its coffers courtesy of users of the Internet.
When it comes to UN treaties, just say no. No to the small arms treaty, no to the disability rights treaty (which the Senate did, thank you), no to the law of the seas treaty, no to any and all climate treaties and certainly no to this one. Just say NO!
I agree, anything that has “UN” scrawled on it, just say no.
Yesterday, Bob Dole, just released from the hospital, age 89. appeared at the US Senate in support of the UN Disability Treaty “to persuade lawmakers to adopt a treaty supporters said would extend disability protections around the world.”
(gee, I wonder if that would include all those individuals sliced and diced in foreign prisons or, just for the hell of it, on the streets by brutal governments)
61 senators voted in support, only 5 votes short of the required 2/3.
These ‘nonbinding treaties set the stage for an Obama Supreme Court to rule using international precedent.Thanks much, Claudia.
You’re telling us that 9 cents of every dollar was wasted on humanitarian aid? There’ve got to be ways to decrease that so that the new vast robber baron fortunes don’t have to suffer along with a mere 91% confiscation of allocated funds. And I hope no one is worried that any serious portion of this money will escape the hands of the powerful few; Please put your minds at rest, the dictators who run the UN, and the oligarchs who service it will easily find ways to keep this huge wealth for themselves.
This is the mission of governments, and of organizations that aspire to be governments: to fatten themselves by mulcting the defenseless private citizen. John Gall put it brilliantly in his book Systemantics:
The United Nations is not, has never been, and will never be an exception.
Claudia,
I recalled seeing that ITU logo on all the Broadband Commission work http://www.broadbandcommission.org/mediacorner/Stories/MDG2.aspx that is pushing both to create a right to broadband and education and then to simultaneously control it.
Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia’s Earth Institute figures prominently in all these initiatives as well. That should also give us pause. Broadband Commission and creating the UN’s new World Happiness Report to make Scandinavia the global model of Wellbeing for All. What could go wrong?
“Digital Inclusion for All” and our friend from Claudia’s previous post from Bulgaria. What could go wrong?
https://itunews.itu.int/En/2861-Broadband-Commission-for-Digital-Development–Highlights-from-the-Sixth-Meeting-in-New-York.note.aspx
From this past September.
UNESCO, UNEP, and the Slim Foundation. I guess that means favorable NYT coverage?
This is the report I remembered that links the Broadband Initiative to Climate Action and the new Mercantilistic Low Carbon Economy sought in the future.
http://www.broadbandcommission.org/Documents/Climate/BD-bbcomm-climate.pdf
Which is why to the UN actual temps do not matter. Only the models do because modelling is the new name for centrally planning an economy and telling citizens around the world what they can and cannot do.
Also the reason the tech companies have such a vested interest in pushing this altered Ecosystem view of the economy of the future. And the new UN driven education that guts the rational mind in favor of emotionally driven habits of mind. No wonder UNESCO and the accreditation agencies that head up the UN’s Quality Assurance compliance program are all becoming so aggressive on this Values and Vocational for all using tech equipment vision for all classrooms http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/values-and-vocational-creating-citizen-drones-via-education-worldwide/
If you coupled the Newmindedness and Communitarian/Bodhisattva values sought by the ed model, control over economies in the name of Sustainability UNEP seeks, and control over the Internet ITU is pushing, you will have annihilated personal and economic freedom globally. It just won’t be widely visible yet.
That’s par for the course with government telecom inefficiency. The FCC’s Universal Service Fund has received something like $200 billion over the last 10-20 years and wasted most of it. It was supposed to go into building out and maintaining rural infrastructure, but there was never any accountability in how the American telecoms spent the money.
Telecoms have traditionally been extreme beneficiaries of government help ranging from eminent domain to subsidies. They are closer to utilities than normal enterprises, so there is room for the government to regulate them for the common good. However, these stories are morality tales of why handing over money in the name of expanding the common good rarely works with them.
the ITU involved in oil-for-food in Iraq? What does the ITU have to do with oil or food? Oh..wait, the ITU was expanding Iraq’s telecomunications infrastructure? Wait…the UN was aiding Irag to build up communications facilities that could be used for troop movements and logistics at a time when the UN was confronting a hostile Iraq?
One’s first inclination is to ask what is wrong with the UN, but upon further reflection one must ask what is wrong with US that we tolerate and pay for this?
The Saudis are funding UNESCO now.
More proof of the UN’s perfidy and irrelevance to the intersts of the US. Get out and cut all funding. Let ‘em eat their lies and BS.
Scanning over the top four entries on The Hill Technology link posted above, it should be obvious to all that the power grab is on. Well, this too was predictable.
If they keep the UN from grabbing additional control–they being the Senate and White House, they will pass SOPA-type legislation or cut the Gordian knot through Executive Order, and call it a compromise.
One way or another the Internet will be less free. I believe this past election sealed its fate. The media conglomerates probably feel they are owed something SOPA-like for working so hard to get Obama reelected.
Maybe this will wake some of the Left sympathizers up to the dangers of the UN. Certainly, the Human Rights Commission and Israel, Global Warming Tyranny of the Third World and Western Left, not to mention the Disarmament of Joe Schmoe Small Arms Treaty, havent.
Not to mention the OIC and Non-Aligned Movements push and support for Islamic Blasphemy laws, which the Western Left seems to be agreeable.
But alas, Im not holding my breath. The fools and traitors will continue.
Now that the UN has started using guns on rebels they are showing a few more teeth. That is scarey. If I wanted to make some announcements to just about everybody on earth, simultaneously, controlling the internet would be a key factor.
The one who is going to pretend he is the messiah is very close. Run to Jesus!
Not sure anybody pays any attention to what the UN says. No evidence anyone has in decades. If they charge me a tax, I just won’t pay it. Nobody here in the USA will enforce their rules.
No taxation without representation has been held up by the US Supreme Court. Most large cities that are on a border with another state have tried to tax people that work in the city but live across a state line. That is illegal and they always get ka-bonged when somebody takes them to court.
No different with the UN. The law does not go where enforcement cannot reach.
Maybe this will add fuel to the fire to get out of the UN. It might have been a good idea back then but today it is just a waste of money.
Where in the UN Charter does it allow the UN to collect taxes?
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1996/02/em445nbsp-the-un-taxnbsp-not-now-not-ever
It doesn’t. The power to tax is solely the power of a sovereign state, which the UN isn’t. The UN has tried many times to tax. They will keep trying, no matter how often they fail.
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stoicheion, the risk isn’t that the UN will successfully tax individual citizens. The risk is that the UN would successfully collect money from a dominant multinational corporations like Cisco, for example. A left-coast company like Cisco might pay fees and then use the power of government to prevent other companies from failing to pay those fees. The company might sell out US citizens in order to gain international good PR and greater access to a large international market like China.
Claudia;
Good expose re: ITU. Otherwise, the article lacks depth re: our own corrupt politicos of all stripes, lobbyists, corporate welfare recipients versus the Web. These entities, including many large US (multinational) corporations, including telecoms, media, etc., hate the free info, tax free goods flow, free exchange of ideas, etc. They cannot manipulate the ‘news’ & the narrative anymore. I wouldn’t hold my breath under this radical & corrupt Admin that the UN couldn’t impose a tax on us behind the scene by some nefarious means, like the phone tax, executive fiat, whatever. To Google’s credit, even though the founders are limo-libs, it is for keeping the Web open & free. BTW, China is using US high-tech apps to censor & control the Web within it borders.
Just an aside re: the UN. Since WWII till the fall of the Evil Red Empire in 1990, the UN’s been funded & controlled by Moscow/KGB. Now it is a cesspool of thugs & generalissimos getting rich at our expense. Many more of our liberties shall wither as the noose of the global Leviathan tightens the next four years. The red-brown-eco-green unholy alliance is the coming emperor.
Just one more reason to
1. totally defund the UN
2. withdraw from the UN
3. eject them from US territory
leave the UN …………… anything else is just delaying the complete take over by the un-elected corrupt thugs.