In early September, the world’s most ineffective collection of “low life” thugs had what they like to call “high level” meetings on disease, disabilities, and the rights of migrant workers. And, on September 13, 2011, the 66th session — drum roll, please — of the United Nation’s General Assembly formally convened. On September 22, they will get down to the real business at hand, the only thing the UN has ever really done effectively, namely, the legalization of Jew hatred. That’s the day the UN will celebrate the tenth anniversary of their Durban (“anti-Semitic, pro-racist”) conference in which they named Israel as the world’s only “racist” state. On September 23, former terrorist turned President Mahmoud Abbas will request that the UN admit a twentieth Arab Muslim (so-called “Palestinian”) state.
This global pogrom against Israel is being waged with a weapon of mass destruction, namely the Orwellian propaganda machine which has demonized the Jewish state so effectively that were it to be militarily attacked (as it has been, over and over), few nations would come to its aid (none have) and most would condemn its right to defend itself; indeed, they would label Jewish self-defense as “an act of naked aggression” for which Israel would be expected to apologize and pay Muslim-style blood money. This, too, has already happened. Were our nation to come to the aid of its ally, Israel, America would also be further demonized.
But I do not want to focus on the subjects of racism, Judeophobia, “Islamophobia,” or on the rights of “Palestinian” Arabs. Many other journalists are doing so. Actually, I do but from an entirely different point of view. I want to discuss the kind of human beings who are employed at the UN, how they treat each other on the job, but especially how they treat the vulnerable civilians who are under their protection. In other words: I want to focus on the professional ethics of the people who are voting on such weighty, global issues, and on the institutionalized crimes they commit under the auspices of the UN.
Nearly forty years ago, in his 1972 Nobel Prize acceptance speech (some honorees are actually worthy), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said:
A quarter of a century ago, with great hopes from all mankind, the United Nations Organization was born. Alas, in an immoral world it too grew up immoral.
In 1973, Shirley Hazzard, an Australian civil servant who had worked for the UN Secretariat for a decade in New York, published a book about it. In Defeat of an Ideal: A Study of the Self-Destruction of the United Nations, Hazzard described a level of mediocrity, incompetence, petty despotism, corruption, hypocrisy, and overall impotence, which was so non-redeemable that, in her view, the otherwise lofty UN ideals were “being defeated by the manner in which the present body executes, or claims to execute them.”
And in 1990, Hazzard wrote another book, Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case, in which she indicted the UN again, explaining that the “problem” of the Austrian (and one-time Nazi) UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim was merely “symptomatic of the (ongoing) structural defects” at the UN which include non-accountability, non-transparency, incompetence, cowardice, and exaggerated self-importance. Only in such a setting, Hazzard writes, could such a
deceitful figure be presented as a paragon, his very deficiencies exalted into talents, and his fawnings on tyrants rationalized as consummate diplomacy throughout ten of this world’s most cruel and dangerous years.
I wonder what either of these whistleblowers might have to say about the UN today.
God must love whistleblowers — I surely hope so, because no one else really does. Those whom whistleblowers expose — and that includes the bystanders and the bureaucrats — hate them. Whistleblowers ruin the party, and threaten the high life and the even higher self-regard that the scams allow. Therefore, the evildoers demean, ostracize, impoverish, ignore, crush, and, if necessary, try to kill the whistleblowers. Even when whistleblowers are willing to risk their jobs and their lives, they do not always “win” their cause. And, when a whistleblower does succeed, he or she may still end up in hiding or unemployed or murdered while evil-doers soon pick up the old scam.
In the early 1970s, Detective Frank (“police corruption”) Serpico was the torchbearer for whistleblowers. He passed that torch along to Karen (“plutonium”) Silkwood in the 1980s and to Erin(“hexavalent-chromium”) Brockovich in the 1990s. One 21st century heroic torchbearer, Kathryn (“United Nations sex traffickers”) Bolkovac, like her three predecessors, is now the subject of a film. Bolkovac also wrote a book on her experience.
By the way: Feature films and documentaries do not necessarily accomplish any more than the whistleblower does. People tend to believe that the fact a film exists somehow means that the problem has been solved.
Not so.
Kathryn Bolkovac
In 1999, Bolkovac, originally a cop from Nebraska, became a UN peacekeeper in Sarajevo, where she discovered that the UN peacekeepers, the UN- hired military contractor (DynCorp), and the local police had been trafficking underage female sex slaves into Sarajevo both for profit and for their own twisted pleasure. Their savage treatment of these frightened, mainly East European and Russian girls, which included routine torture, gang-rape, semi-starvation, overwork, primitive living and “working” conditions, is standard behavior for pimps, traffickers, and obviously for UN staff as well.
In the film version, Bolkovac tried to save some girls. This only led to their being more severely tortured, while the other girls were forced to watch — and then murdered. Bolkovac, like others, tried to hold the UN accountable for these enormous crimes. The result? She was threatened and her employment terminated. Bolkovac went public with the information — which was heroic but which changed nothing.
So far, Satan still has the last word.
Like Hazzard, I also once worked at the United Nations; I have some skin in the game. I am, therefore, quite familiar with the UN culture in which civil servants and diplomats hold onto the passports of their home-country domestic servants/slaves, and make them work sixteen hour days, seven days a week, for no money and for very little food; the culture in which the same UN personnel sexually harass and assault their female colleagues and subordinates and when reported, even sued, get off, at most, with the proverbial slap on the wrist; a culture in which UN “peacekeeping” troops rape and traffic the very girls, boys, and women they are supposed to be protecting from war-zone atrocities — for example, the use of rape as a weapon of war. Given the UN’s general level of ineffectiveness (other than in legalizing Jew hatred), the body is also remarkably effective in protecting their barbarian and un-trained employees.
For example: In 1988, Luis Maria Gomez, the Argentine assistant secretary general at the UN, was sued by his assistant, American citizen Catherine Claxon. She filed a sexual harassment complaint. As a result, Claxon was barred from a promotion and her employment was terminated. She took her case to the UN Administrative Tribunal. Although the numerous courts and tribunals acknowledged that her claim was supported by strong evidence, Claxon’s case was eventually blocked by Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar. Gomez was granted diplomatic immunity and returned to Argentina.
In 2003, Joumana Al-Mahayni, an employee working in the office of the United Nations Development Programme in Kuwait, filed a similar claim against her male boss and, of course, received similar results. Again, the UN protected her boss, Mr. Yusuf Mansur; again, there was ample evidence that he had sexually assaulted his subordinate. Nevertheless, and predictably, Ms. Al-Mahayni’s employment was terminated. Many years later, she received a settlement of $10,000; she was never reimbursed for her legal fees or given a severance package. Mr. Mansur resigned and avoided litigation. The UN did not make any follow-up charges.
In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union charged a UN diplomat from Kuwait, Major Waleed Al Saleh, and his wife with abusing their three female domestic servants from India. The ACLU stated that
the women were forced to work every day from 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. until late in the night, sometimes as late as 1:30 a.m…the women…never received any of the money.…They were subjected to threats and verbal and physical abuse, including one particularly violent incident in which Sabbithi (one of the servants) was knocked unconscious after being thrown against a counter by Al Saleh. The women were often not allowed time to eat or to use the bathroom and were frequently deprived of food. Two of them were allowed one hour off a month to attend church. The workers had their passports taken away and were isolated from contact with the external world.
Ultimately the case was dismissed on the grounds of diplomatic immunity.
Was Bolkovac’s experience unique? Were UN peacekeepers particularly awful only in Sarajevo? On the contrary. UN peacekeepers were also accused of “sexual misconduct” not only in Kosovo/Serbia/Bosnia in the 1990s, they were similarly accused in Sierra Leone (2002), Liberia (2003-2004), the Congo (2004), Haiti (2005-to the present day), and in the Sudan (2005-to the present).
How does the UN defend their dastardly peacekeepers? They argue that the troops often come from and serve in countries which have “poor records” in terms of “gender based violence.” This is offered as a culturally relativist explanation or excuse for that old canard, “boys will be boys?” In Bolkovac’s case, the troops came from 45 different countries, and many of them could not use computers, write reports, or drive cars.
In addition, in terms of redress, the legal loopholes are gigantic — herds of elephants can easily spend their long lives grazing there.
Neither the UN nor the countries in which UN employees actually commit the crimes can legally punish these men. Only their own home countries may do so — but why would they? The countries in which the UN operates are not responsible for the actions of foreign employees. One Haitian feminist group has accused UN peacekeepers of “ bringing their bad habits with them.” The group is referring to an “increase in prostitution.”
Yes, there are ways the UN can feed already traumatized girls and women other than forcing them to provide sex services to UN peacekeeping troops as their only or best way of survival.
In her excellent report for Refugees International, “Must Boys Be Boys?” Sarah Martin describes a culture of fear and intimidation among UN peacekeepers in the Congo (2004) which effectively silenced staff members who wanted to “report sexual misconduct by colleagues because they fear(ed) being stigmatized and punished as ‘whistle-blowers.’” UN peacekeepers had sex with Congolese children and women, including Congolese adult female UN colleagues, simply because the practice was already pandemic. They did not view their role as stopping such violence or as refraining from joining it.
As the UN peacekeepers ribaldly frolicked in the Congo, the UN orgy was also on in Liberia. An internal UN document was exposed in the mainstream media. In Liberia, UN peacekeeping troops had sex with
girls as young as 12 years of age (who) are engaged in prostitution, forced into sex acts and sometimes photographed by UN peacekeepers in exchange for $10 or food or other commodities.
Might the rape of a male child or a young man by a UN peacekeeper make the front pages and lead to an effective prosecution?
Well — no. In July of 2011, an 18-year-old Haitian male rape victim accused a UN peacekeeper of “sexually assaulting” him. The rape was videotaped. A physician confirmed physical evidence of the rape — the evidence was clear even five weeks later. The UN found the man guilty, not of “sexual misconduct,” but of allowing a civilian to enter the UN compound. The UN dismissed this as “the actions of only a few,” and claimed that the UN “does its utmost to prevent such abuses from occurring” by “training troops to sensitize them to respect human rights.”
The Wilsonian-influenced ideals of the UN are not realistic or realizable. In turn, the UN is predicated on the myth — nay, the lie — that UN diplomats and civil servants are morally upright, fair, decent, rational — and, not the vicious tyrants, bullies, thugs, liars, egomaniacs, cowards, and grifters that they truly are. Nor does the UN have a transparent system in place that would hold their mightily flawed personnel accountable for the crimes they commit.
I am told we live in a post-feminist age. Thus, the information is in about what rape is and what rape does. We know that repeated public gang-rape and repeated rape is no longer just a spoil of war but is now a weapon of war. We know that prostitution is not a “victimless” crime, that the prostituted child or woman are the victims; they must become alcoholics and drug addicts in order to deaden their torment, they are given foul diseases by their “customers” who are sometimes their murderers because they infect them with AIDS; both their working lives and how long they actually live are significantly shorter than those who are not prostituted. The UN (ironically enough) has estimated that over 32 million people are enslaved around the world and that the majority (80% or more) are sex slaves. We now know that sex trafficking is estimated as a $32 billion global business, that girls and women are kidnapped, sold by their parents, or tricked into it and rarely escape alive.
If it is clear that the United Nations allows its peacekeeping troops to commit major human rights atrocities, why would we allow such an institution to render decisions that are meant to affect the entire world? Why would we abide by such decisions? More important: Why should the United States fund an international criminal operation? The United States pays the lion’s share of the Secretariat costs at the United Nations. Don’t worry, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has assured stressed American taxpayers that the two-year headquarters budget (2010-11) will only amount to a meager $4.92 billion.
According to the UN peacekeeping website, the budget for the fiscal year 1 July 2011-30 June 2012 is approximately seven billion dollars. The United States is responsible for 27 percent of this cost, or about two billion. This is far more than what Japan (1 billion), the UK (591 million), China (285 million), Spain (230 million), or Korea (164 million) pays for peacekeepers. Interestingly, under President Barack Obama’s administration, the United States overpaid its share of the UN peacekeeping budget. In fact, our overpayment of 287 million dollars is more than what most of the world’s supporters — including China — pay for “peacekeeping.”
Why is the United States funding rapists, criminals, pimps, brothels, and sex traffickers? Why are we funding orgies? Why are we funding the most heinous betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable civilians in war zones? Why are we overpaying for UN peacekeeping?
Here is one thing we can do immediately. As of 2004, women comprised less than 6% of the total UN peacekeeping operations personnel. I would send many of the “boys” home and hire more well-trained, career military women and police officers like Bolkovac and, dare I say it, yes I dare: Until such time that developing countries develop effective policies about “gender violence,” the UN peacekeeper troops should be comprised of “peacekeepers,” both male and female, from developed countries.
Whether developed Western nations are actually “anti-gender violence” or not and, if so, whether they should continue to assume the “White Man’s Burden,” is the subject of other pieces.
Image: Oleg Golovnev / Shutterstock.com
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