[.ca] Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled ... (ISBN 140005494X)

Talkshop for dictators:
In the introduction, the author shows that at least once in its existence the United Nations served the purpose it was created for. That was in 1990 when the Security Council took a stand against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Unfortunately, in every other instance it has failed, mostly spectacularly and often with tragic consequences. There were for example the peacekeeping disasters of Somalia 1993, Rwanda 1994, Srebrenica (Bosnia) 1995, Kosovo and Congo/Zaire. The last two crises flowed from the Bosnia and Rwanda disasters respectively. The refusal to confront evil is the major flaw of the UN. This refusal eventually morphed into collusion with evil, as the Oil For Food scandal demonstrates. In chapter 2: Failure Foreshadowed, Gold discusses the birth of Israel in 1948 when there were no UN forces to withstand the Arab aggression. Likewise during The Kashmir War of the same year between India and Pakistan. Already the organization was betraying the vision of its founders by not acting against the aggressor. And from there it went downhill: Tibet followed in 1950, India annexed Goa in 1962 and many similar acts followed. Chapter 3: Cold War Freeze, looks at the North Korean invasion of the South in 1950, the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The next chapter deals with the Six Day War of 1967 and Resolution 242. The UN remained passive and actually enabled the outbreak of war. During the Iran-Iraq War that started in 1980, the UN again refused to condemn the aggressor and it did nothing about Saddam's 1987 chemical attacks on the Kurds. After the Gulf War, it again ignored genocide, this time against the Shia Muslims of Iraq. In chapter 6: Impartial To Genocide, the disturbing and heartbreaking events of the Rwandan genocide are recalled. General Romeo Dallaire warned the Dept of Peacekeeping Operations - then under Kofi Annan - of the impending horror, but the warning was ignored. In some instances, UN forces colluded with the mass murderers. The UN's inaction ultimately led to a regional war in Central Africa. The next chapter deals with the tragedy of Srebrenica and the other supposed "safe havens" in Bosnia and shows the duplicity of the UN and certain European governments. Chapter 8 discusses the international criminal court, a highly politicised concept from the beginning, and one that cannot be expected to be objective. Chapter 9 provides proof of how the UN backs terrorists, with particular reference to the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and the many instances of collusion between it and the UN's UNIFIL force. The author concludes that the major cause of these failures is the international body's moral equivalence. It does not distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil or victim and aggressor. Although he was responsible for the failure in Rwanda, Kofi Annan nevertheless became Secretary-General. The Oil For Food scandal and the underreported child sex abuse scandals have completely undermined the organization's legitimacy. It adopts numerous Anti-Israel resolutions every year but has for years ignored the genocide in Darfur. In fact the perpetrator Sudan was elected to its Human Rights Commission in 2004. The 2001 UN Conference Against Racism in Durban was an openly Antisemitic hate fest. Unlike the EU or Africa, Israel is isolated in that it does not form part of a larger bloc, and it is always up against the Arabic and Islamic states. Although it has failed utterly to halt aggression and bring about a peaceful world order, the UN is still protected by the ideology of political correctness. Some of its agencies still perform good work, but overall the spiral is further downhill as documented in the Afterword with further revelations on Darfur, sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers, oil for food monies that went to terrorists and UN agencies infiltrated by terror groups. An example of the latter is UNRWA and its ties to Hamas. The Appendix: The Paper Trail, provides evidence on various failures like Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Oil For Food and UNRWA's ties to Hamas, mostly from the United Nations' own documents. There are extensive notes, acknowledgements and an index. The book includes maps of the Kashmir Dispute, Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, the Six-Day war, Rwanda, and its Neighbours, the Bosnian Conflict and Lebanon and Israel. There are also 17 black and white photographs of personalities and tragic evidence of the UN's failures. In addition to this valuable and informative book, I recommend The UN Gang by Pedro Sanjuan, Global Deception by Joseph Klein, The UN Exposed by Eric Shawn and Inside The Asylum by Jed Babbin.