The trouble with these people is that they are serious, and others are sick enough to support them. Why? What possesses people to support such corrupt thugs and fools? The power of denial is all I can come up with. People want to believe the feel good fantasies of a good U.N. so they do.

Scary.

He wants to expand his own staff, change the world’s climate, end organized crime, eliminate all private weapons, and double U.N.-directed development aid to the tune of at least $100 billion a year, “front-loaded,” for his detailed plan to end world poverty.

Assuming that this is true, it’s the best argument in favor of buying guns that I’ve heard in my entire life.

Stalin used famine as a means of warfare against the peasantry in Russia and Ukraine, and elminated them as a political force by simply starving millions of them to death. His technique has been used again and again in faraway countries about whom we know little, and in faraway countries about whom, as with today’s Zimbabwe, we know much. Mugabe today is deliberately creating a famine in order to eliminate opposition from private landowners who do not even pose any threat to his misrule.

P.J. O’Rourke discussed it at length in his book on population control, clean water, and related topics. Note that he was talking to recognized experts in the field. There has not been a famine caused by simple lack of food in a very long time. I forget the time frame exactly, but it was well over 150 years–closer to 300 if I remember correctly. *All* the famines of the 20th century were deliberately caused by the state.

And less anyone dismiss O’Rourke as a mere humorist, I cite him only as a very readable and entertaining introduction to the topic. What he said was so incredible that I dug quite a bit on the topic after first reading his book. I found no serious and logical arguments against his points.

I did some contract work for one of the UN agencies in the late 1990s, and a highly placed fellow therein told me that through-put for food aid in sub-Saharan Africa is FIVE PERCENT.

The rest is raked off by the kleptocrats.

The man who told me this is a very hardcore leftie, old school; and he giggled as he said it.

Nearly everything we donor nations give the Third World, in other words, goes to line the pockets of the tyrants who are creating the problem in the first place (how many democracies have famines? think about it.)

Mind you, what I really like to happen is to replace the UN with a Council of Democracies, where the membership would require mastering basics of electoral process and the rule of law. With fully transparent finances. A girl can dreamÖ.

the extensive enquiries of the panel.”

The UN’s seemingly endless facility to voice meaningless verbiage is a wonder to behold.